Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday,
June first, twenty twenty six, and I'm the host of
the show, Doctor Kara Santa Maria, And as always, before
we dive into this week's episode, I want to thank
those of you who make Talk Nerdy possible. Remember for
the last six hundred four episodes, Yes, that is the
number we are on. So that is what eleven no,
twelve years coming on twelve years. This show is and
will always be one hundred percent free to download. I'm
also not in a podcast network. This is an independently
produced show, so we rely we When I say we,
it's me, but I really do rely on the incredible
support from my podcast coordinator and long term executive assistant,
Noah Dilworth, along with all of the fine folks at
warp Zone Post to do my post production, my editing
on the show. So that's we when I say we,
And yeah, we're a small outfit and we rely on
the support from individuals just like you to keep that happening.
If you are in a position where you can give
on an episodic basis and offset that cost so that
those who aren't in the position can continue to listen
for free. All you've got to do is visit patreon
dot com. That's p A t R e O N
dot com, slash talk Nerdy to learn more. This week's
top patrons include Chuck Blell, David J. E. Smith, Daniel Lang,
Mary Neiva Will Defrain, David Compton, Brian Holden, Gabo, jay
Ulrica Hagmann, Pasqually, Jelati, Rica Maharaj and Joe Wilkinson. Thank
you all so much. So today I had the opportunity
to chat with doctor Jenny Durant. She is a freelance
writer and affiliate researcher at UC Davis, and she focuses
on bees, agriculture, and the environment. And she has a
new book out it's called Bitter Honey, Big Ags, Threat
to Bees and the Fight to save Them. So, without
any further ado, here she is doctor Jenny Durant. Well, Jenny,
thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2: Thanks Carl, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to talk about your new book, Bitter Honey,
Big Aggs, Threat to Bees and the Fight to save them.
I'm also I'm just excited to be talking to somebody
who does a lot of you know, freelance writing journalism,
but has the qualifications. I mean, you have a PhD
in Environmental science, policy and management. You are able to
read the literature when you write at these topics. And
one thing that I've found as a you know, scientist
clinician in a completely different field, when I'm tasked with
talking about news stories around the impact of you know,
whether we're talking about bees. I think a lot of
people do tend to be like particularly interested in bees
because of their role in agriculture, but insects in general,
and the relationship between monocropping or the relationship between pesticides
or different herbicides. It is so hard for me sometimes
to know what is rhetoric and what the science actually shows.
And so I'm excited to be to be talking to
you about this big and somewhat complex topic today.
Speaker 2: Me too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So tell me a little bit about yourself before
we dig into into all things bees. I mentioned that
you're a writer and a freelance writer and and science communicator,
but you also do maintain some university affiliations as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. I'm a currently research affiliate at UC
Davis and I am also working on a collaborative research
project with researcher at the University of Illinois and one
at USTA on looking at pesticides. And so I'm still
got my you know, feet in that world, but I
am kind of branching out and doing more writing and
sort of journalism and science communication.
Speaker 1: M when you were still in school, like when you
were finishing your PhD, and then when you went on
to your post doc, and I guess even beyond with
some of these current research affiliations, what were you studying
at the time, kind of what has been the trajectory
of your research questions.
Speaker 2: It's a great question. Yeah. So I I actually really
came into my PhD program with an interest in two things.
One of them was I had this background in studying
rice cultures. So I did a Fulbright scholarship in the
Philippines in the rice terraces in a town called Banawe,
and I was studying how introduced genetically modified rice had
really upended the traditional cultures in the region. And while
I was there, I actually got interested in bees. I
was homesick and there were some other things going on,
and I read The Secret Life of Bees by Sumunk Kid,
and so then I got I went and did this
like mini internship on kind of like a little resort
on a different island in the Philippines, and I really
just fell in love with bees. And so I did
start off my PhD thinking I was going to kind
of study Rice, and then I was like, I'm just
really into bees. And so this was twenty twelve, and
my poor advisor has this like incredible is she's just
so well known for her work in Indonesia and was
like so excited for me to work in Southeast Asia,
and I was like, I want to study these in California.
She's Fancy Paluso and she she's a real sort of
titan in that field and in a social science field
called political cology, and so I think she was intrigued.
And I was looking at my social scientists, and so
I was looking at, you know, the sort of social, political,
economic drivers of be losses because there was this big
question to back up a little back in two thousand
and seven with colony collapse disorder, which is when I
got into bees. Was in two thousand and seven, that's
when my Fulbright scholarship was and so anyway, I was
like kind of intrigued by this mystery that was really
mystifying scientists, like why are all these bees dying? It
was this kind of phenomenon where bees big beekeepers would
open their hives and bees had just disappeared from the
colonies and we didn't know why. And so that was
kind of where I was on that farm and colony
collapse disorder was happening at the same time, and I
was just like, what is going on? What's happening? And
so I kept kind of trying to do different things
and move on from the topic, but it kept coming
back to me. And so that was when I applied
to the PhD program. And so really after my first year,
to get back to your question, I was, I kind
of switched my first semester and was like, I'm gonna
do this be thing. I started going to conferences, bekeeping conferences,
meeting beekeepers, attending meetings like with the EPA, because I'm
in California and you know, this huge portion of be
heaper of like almost you know, almost all commercial beekeepers
come to California in that so it was this really
great opportunity. I was really positioned well geographically to study
the end and it was in my backyard and so
I just kind of jumped on that wagon and kept going.
And I've honestly it's been my main focus since twenty twelve,
so over fourteen years now.
Speaker 1: Wow, So what was it do you think, like really
that made you so interested in that? Was it really
just because it was kind of an unsolved mystery at
the time. Do you have any personal I don't know,
like deeper personal connection to big egg or to like
bees from childhood or something.
Speaker 2: It's such a good question, and it's kind of an
existential one when you've been like fourteen years, I'm like,
why am I so into these bees? And I've been
interested since you know, two thousand and seven, so almost
almost twenty years now. And I I mean sometimes I'm like,
I have no idea, but I I do think they
are this this kind OF's going to sound corny as
a scientist, but kind of magical creature. They are. Just
there's so many interesting ways that bees operate as a colony,
the sort of feet, the way that they work together.
Like for example, you know, there's a statistic that a
single honey bee only produces one twelfth of a teaspoon
of honey, and that a hive can fly. There's another
one that I was reading the other day, like a
hive can fly two times around the earth, like something
like fifty thousand miles to produce a pound of honey.
And when you just think about the immense work and
when you understand bees more and the immense work that's required,
they're pretty inspiring. But I will also say I really
love beekeepers. I think that's probably what has kept me
studying this is they are quirky and funny and kind
of they just they have great stories. They're for independent,
They kind of some of them describe themselves as like
the cow you know cowboys, like ranching their bees, you know,
driving their their bees and trucks cross country, and I
kind of think of them in that way, and they're
they're just so and I really wanted a place to
highlight those stories. So I just had such a great
and interesting time and was so compelled by their stories
while I was in the field that I really wanted
to write the book as an opportunity to highlight their
voices and their stories and and really you know, shine
a light on this broader context of our farms, our
food system, and our our agricultural system that they're operating in.
So I think, really, when I when I really think
about it, it's it's the bee hebirds that have kept
me invested for for so long. Oh, I love that.
Speaker 1: And so let's let's get into that then, because you know,
I guess when we talk about this threat maybe, yeah,
I mean, you use it in the in the subhead
of your book, A big eggs threat to bees and
the fight to save them, this sort of threat, maybe
you can help us understand a little bit about what
is going on with regards to colony collapse and you know,
some of the more complex variables at play.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I was first kind of finding out
about it, so back in two thousand and seven, again
with Colonie Clock's disorder to return there, we you know,
researchers really didn't understand what was going on, What was
causing this very specific phenomenon of a colony kind of
disappearing from the hive is typically just so people understand,
typically what would happen is, you know, maybe the forager
bees that go out and gather nectar and honey, they
might leave for the day and maybe they get hit
by pesticides and so a more typical loss would be
you'd have those bees, some of them flying back, dying
out side the hive, or dying in the hive and
being pushed out of the hive, and so there would
be some kind of marker or obvious loss that a
beekeeper could see, or the bees are dying slowly of
some disease or some virus and you track it over time.
So it's really unusual. Because bees are so protective of
their queen and of the bee larva and of honey,
it's really unusual to open a coliy and have nothing
inside or very little inside except typically what you'd find
is maybe a queen and some bee larva and some
nurse bees, which are kind of the young bees that
are feeding the bee larva. So that phenomenon I mentioned
that because that phenomenon has been much less prevalent and
we still kind of haven't really figured out what was
causing that, but some and beekeepers are kind of like, oh,
I think it's this or that. So some might say
it's pesticides, and some might say it's verroa mites, which
are this like kind of like a crab like looking
tick that feasts on bees. What do you call it?
Fat bodies that so it's kind of like if you
had a giant crab on the side of your body
feeding on your liver, and so just wherever you're walking,
you've got that crab. They're kind of feeding on you
and transmitting diseases, and so it's pretty nasty. And this
is the number one killer of managed colony managed colonies.
But it's this every time we kind of talk about
bee losses in terms of one thing that's killing them,
like pesticides or mites, it's problematic because they really the
issues really feed into each other, and so for example,
pesticides can make bees more prone make and make them
kind of weaker and less able to fight off the
viruses that the mites are passing to them. And mites
are becoming more virulent in part because of the pesticides
that beekeepers are using to try to kill them off
and to control them, and they're becoming resistant to those
over time. And beekeepers are so intensely managing their bees
because they need to have as many colonies as possible
for mostly the almond industry each February, and so as
I sort of was talking to beekeepers, my initial research
question was how have beekeepers changed their management practices over
the last twenty years to pollinate for the almond industry,
and how maybe is that contributing to honeybe vulnerability and beekeepers,
you know, would be the first to tell me that
they know that their management practices for almonds are making
their bees more vulnerable. But they're in this really tough
bind because they're having such a hard time getting by
as an industry because of cheap honey prices, because forage
is disappearing. And so the more I just dove into
these questions, I started seeing how interlinked the problems were.
You know that that you know, pesticides being applied, this
is part of industrial agriculture. Beekeepers intensively managing their bees,
this is to help pollinate for industrial agriculture. Foraged being lost,
and so bees aren't able to feed on natural nectar
and pollen in the ways that they have in the past.
And a lot of this is because of agricultural monoculture agriculture,
and because of the use of herbicides, you know, to
help promote monoculture agriculture. And so I just started seeing
like this is all industrial agriculture. It's partly the way
bees keepers are managing their bees. And it's also the
way we manage our farms and the land that you know,
we're growing crops on. So that was where that that
threat is. It's sort of a combined series of pressures,
all squeezing beekeepers and bees, you know, kind of to
their breaking point.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting because I can't help but see
a parallel and you, because you're so steeped in this,
you might be able to help me find where my
analogy works and where it breaks down. And actually it
may be a little bit personal for you, So you
just tell me if you want to continue down this
thread or you don't. But one of the things that
I think about when I think about the description that
you just gave is antibiotic resistant bacteria, antibiotic resistant infections,
and sort of the arms race that we have to
try to fight them back, developing new and different antibiotics,
and then the bacteria learn a way to you know,
outsmart it, and then it just keeps on going. And
another example I often use in my practice, because I'm
a psychologist in a cancer center here in LA is
describing why cancer treatments often will work for a while
and then they fail is that overtime, the cancer learn
how to evade the chemotherapy or you know, these different
chemical approaches to treatment. And so I can't help but
feel like there is an arms race going on as
well between these farmers trying to maintain a healthy crop
and ensure that pests aren't decimating their crops, and at
the same time realizing that there's healthy tissue being killed
by these different approaches, and that there's a it's a
large kind of system, and you have to find that
balance between protecting you know, the healthy tissue, the non
cancer as cells, beating back the cancer as cells. In
this case, the healthy tissue is the bees, you know,
and and continuing to be able to ensure that all
of the interested parties or all of the outcomes that
you're hoping for exist in a balance.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's it's a great analogy. And yes,
I mean full disclosure. I a breast cancer survivor, and
I do write about breast cancer. I caught it very early,
but I do, you know, track that world, and so
I appreciate the metaphor, and I do talk about to
kind of touch on both your metaphors. I do talk
talk about the antibiotic resistance and how that how the
parallel there because it is very similar, and so what
will happen sometimes is be heapers might use this and
they've been using the same heavy duty pesticide which is
commonly known as tactic. It's a chemical called amatrask, and
most recently they had these huge sixty percent losses last winter,
which is just astound. I mean, it's a statistic, so
it's easy to kind of tune it out, but sixty
percent of the entire nation's colonies. It was around one
point seven million colonies that were lost last winter, and
what they found was that they primarily died from diseases
spread by verroamites. But what was interesting was that most
of the varroamites were resistant to tactic, to this chemical
that heepers are using. And so even if beekeepers were
doing all the right things, they were treating their bees,
you know, they were managing the way they should, these
mites are becoming resistant and they hadn't for decades. And
that's why this chemical was used, because this resistance would
happen with other chemicals and they weren't seeing it there,
and so it's been a source of enormous stress and
fear because it's really hard to get new pesticides for
the beekeeping industry approved because it's such a small industry
and the R and D is so expensive for new
agrichemicals that be heepers, that there just hasn't been a
lot of like financial incentive for chemical companies to invest
in good varroamticides, and so they've really struggled. They've really
had very few options to manage their mights. And the
other piece, you know, to the cancer piece, and you know,
I'm thinking of like how immunotherapy is becoming of interest,
this idea that we look at how we can boost
our immune system's ability to fight off cancer rather than
just trying to kill all the cancer cells. And I
think that that is something that and that's like, you know,
my very rough summary of immuno therapy, but I think
that that's kind of what we're seeing a bit in
in farming, especially with like regenerative farming and you know,
diversified farming, small scale agriculture where farmers are growing a
variety of crops instead of one crop. Is that we're
seeing that the more diversity we have on farm, we're
attracting beneficial pests, and so you don't need to use
as many pesticides, if any, because you've got these i'm sorry,
beneficial predators of our pests. You know, you attract beneficial
insects that can attack the pests instead of you having
to spray chemicals and you the farmer, and so it's
I think that what we're seeing is that, you know,
promoting sort of this broader health of our ecosystems. And
a farm is an ecosystem, right that that is an
important strategy we need to be embracing to help address
the all these issues that are coming up with monoculture farming.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't help but flag and you know
this is.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: I'm a science communicator, you're a science communicator. I've this
is not an area that I've like been kind of
communicating about or writing about frequently or with with any
specific depth over other areas, but it's definitely an area
that has been part of the conversation for quite some time.
And one thing that I noticed living out here in
Los Angeles is that I have friends and and loved
ones who will sometimes take the what I would view
as a very simplistic tack of this is all because
of big ag This is all because of GMOs. And
I'll hear this all the time. And obviously there's a
lot of breakdown that we can do here.
Speaker 2: We don't have to spend.
Speaker 1: The whole hour on it. But I worry sometimes that
when individuals start to argue against the use, for example,
of glyfhassa, which has been linked, you know, to colony
collapse disorder, but just linked, that they start to argue,
you know, why, why are you against genetic modification? Why
are you against the use of round up ready crops?
Why are you against? And it always kind of ends
up being monocropping is bad, and I'm like, wait, but
that's not what you started out arguing against. And so
I'm really curious what your experience has been digging into
the sort of very passionate rhetoric and I guess advocacy
within farming communities, within big or even small agriculture, and
sort of the difference I think between the regular everyday
person on the street who actually doesn't work in a
farming capacity at all their views of genetically modified crops
and the types of especially specifically like round up ready crops.
So the types of pesticides that are used on them,
and then what's actually happening in practice with different farmers.
Speaker 2: It's a great point, and I want to start by
just responding by saying how much I mean. I've been
working in farming, you know, in agriculture for you know,
since twenty twelve and was interested in it far but
before that, and a lot of my research has also
involved interviewing almond growers. And I also when I was
at Davis, did an interview with small sorry, a survey,
a large scale survey with small diversified farmers on how
they were affected during the COVID pandemic. And so I
have so much empathy for any farmer, monoculture, any kind
of farmer, because I think that this system that they're
in is incredibly hard to compete in and to it's
just really hard to make food for profit, and just
a profit off of the earth, you know, like that
is a hard thing because it's a finite resource, and
because there are ecological limitations to that kind of a
profit model with anything that's ecological. And so I have
a lot of empathy they are on most farmers are
on some kind of treadmill and I have a friend
who I profile in the book, Jonathan Lundgrend, and he
has done a lot of research with regenerative farmers and
sort of conventional farmers, and he just talks about how
exhaustive farmers are and how stressed out they are, and
how worried they are about losing their land, and how
many of them don't want to be farming that way.
And so I'm not actually anti monoculture in general, but
I do think that I mean, there are some crops
like it makes sense when you are growing almonds to
just grow almonds, you know, on a plot of land,
because of if you're trying to grow for scale in
any way, you know, the way is the harvesting is
just so much easier when you have machinery to do it,
and you can get that machinery into the orchard if
you have sort of standard orchard rows. But what I
do think is that we can be constantly thinking about
how to add diversity back in even to monoculture farms,
and we may need to really rethink the scale on
which we're growing monoculture egg If we have these huge,
giant farms, there is inevitably going to be an ecological
disconnect and they inevitably be kind of demand, you know,
pesticide use or GMO use. I'm not against any of
those things, but I'm not really here even to be
prescriptive as a scientist. But what I can highlight is that,
you know, in my conversations with farmers, our current system
is really challenging. It's very difficult to promote life on
a lot of our monoculture farms, and that includes bees,
but also you know, all the other insects and birds
that used to interact with our diverse farms when they
were smaller and kind of had many more crops on them.
We used to have a more integrated farming system before
we converted to monoculture. But the benefit of it is
that it's been able to feed you know, so many
people too. So I think that in general, I do
think we need to be rethinking on culture farming and
the benefits of it and how ways that we can
add diversity back in. But I'm definitely not here to
demonize farming, and I think that those solutions that are
going to work best are going to come within partnership
with farmers, because they need to be the ones that
are helping us understand their limitations, their struggles, what's challenging
about farming, the resources that they need, and what tools
they need to help do these environmentally, you know, and
more environmentally sort of regenerative or supportive practices like helping pollinators.
They need support. They can't do it in the structure
that they have currently. They can't afford it, and so
we really need to be thinking about how to work
in partnership with them to support them because a lot
of them want to be better stewards of the land.
They just don't have the ability, resources, time, you know,
knowledge to do so.
Speaker 1: And we can't stay sort of as we can't remain
I think the uninformed citizens that we often do. I
feel like this is one of those areas where there's
such a massive disconnect between the downstream user, right the
person who ends up with the food on their plate,
and where it came from and what's involved in producing it.
I was just working with PBS on a series recently
on Earth Focus and coming across the statistic that like,
some of the most food insecure people in the state
of California are the very farm hands that are working
the fields.
Speaker 2: I mean, it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: That way right, Like, we know that's a perfect sort
of meta example of these failures. But I'm curious if
part of the I guess, part of my frustration. And
I'm wondering if you've seen this in your own research
when you are talking to these farmers and you're talking
to people whose boots are on the ground, and you know,
researchers in agriculture and university settings as well, and then
you talk to everyday people at you know, whole foods
are air one, and do you find that they often
conflate monocropping or patenting you know, food or seeds for example,
they conflate that with the process that is genetic modification,
and they sort of paint everything with a broad brush.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of people don't understand gene modification,
and I think that they're I mean, farmers, farming is
a kind of genetic modification we have been. I mean,
if you look at sort of the original apple you
know apples like say back from where they were first
came in the Middle East or.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, you know you don't want to eat any
of that stuff.
Speaker 2: And they don't taste great. I mean they related them
over hundreds and hundreds of years, right to get to
get these like delicious juicy apples and then but that's
not the narrative though, Right.
Speaker 1: The narrative is, here's an heirloom tomato. Heirloom means it's ancient.
Heirloom means we didn't do all that dirty science to it,
and this tastes better. And it's like, no, that airlom
tomato is also from the seventies, like, you know, like
we're not you're not talking about a strawberry that existed
on a different continent and wasn't crossed yet and didn't
get like juicy and sweet and delicious, like most things
were pretty before we figured out how to make them better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although you know, I want to put uh, you know,
there's two points, a couple points there, so one of them.
As far as like the heirloom point, I mean, I
do think that the value of promoting heirloom species is
maintaining genetic diversity. Yeah, definitely. We have you know, potato varieties.
You know that we you know that our heirloom potatoes.
And it sounds corny, it's maybe it sounds like a
marketing strategy, but it can also mean this is a
potato that's been around for so long, and we want
to meet the diversity of our potato species because simplification
in any ecological system is dangerous and just relying on
as we saw with Irish potato famine one type of
potato is very dangerous. So it is important to maintain uh,
you know, heirloom varieties and I have, you know, I
think I think there's a lot of value in that
because not just for general diversity, but also because there
are you know, communities that have long time relationships with
these crops too, and there's cultural value to some of
these you know, kind of older airlom varieties too, So
I do see the benefit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's an important point to make too,
because I also see the benefit to having you know,
a lot of genetic diversity. I think my concern is
that people don't know what heirloom means. They think it
means that it's like ancient and that it's untouched, but
really what it means is that it's an open pollinated
plant and that it has been around for a specific
amount of time, so it's it's very genetically diverse, and
it's at least older than fifty years.
Speaker 2: That is old, right.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that it's you know, a Babylonian tomato.
And I think people literally think there's the before times
and there's the now times, and they commit a naturalistic fallacy.
Now that we have science, everything is bad. Everything before
science was quote natural and good.
Speaker 2: Totally agree the other thing. I think we're totally in
agreement here, and I think but I would add one
other piece, which is I think where genetic modification concerns
me is situations like what I saw in the Philippines,
which is where you introduce a new species thinking hey,
this is going to help you, you know, your problems
with growing grace. Now you can grow rice twice a year,
and there can be these unintended consequences if local communities
were not involved in that process. And so like what
I saw in the Philippines was that this rice culture
that had gone from kind of like planting rice once
a year, and there were just like rituals built into
you know, for the harvest, for the planting, there were
you know, like it was thousands of years that they
had been developing these these cultures, this culture, and then
this new rice was introduced and it was it could
be harvested twice a year, and so it really began
eroding some not only some of these traditions, but also
it had unintended ecological consequences as well. It really disrupted
the kind of biome or microbiome of the of the
rice terraces as well. And so I think my big
sort of red flag around or I have no fear
of that science, it's more how it's implemented. And we
need to be doing gyg modific case in partnership with
the communities who were getting these DNA these biological resources
from and doing it in partnership and implementing in partnership
so that it's not this yet another kind of you know,
green revolution that's sort of pushed on you know, communities.
It's it's done in partnership. And I think that changing
that approach, and that is happening you know, around the world,
but coming from that approach, I think will will kind
of take the best of both worlds this, you know,
these indigenous knowledges and local community knowledge and these scientific tools,
and I think together that we can like you know,
really accomplish some incredible things with our food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'd be curious if you agree or disagree
with this, But I would even argue that that actually
has nothing to do with the fact that something is
genetically modified. It's one hundred percent of social justice issue.
And I am like one hundred percent on your side
when when you say that we cannot say, here a
thing that some scientists in a lab developed and we
think it's better for your culture. Right It's that's an
etic emic problem that we have seen throughout sociology, throughout
you know, Western science, and medicine across the board. But
there's nothing about the fact that that was a GM
crop that had that effect. It could have been produced
through conventional breeding as well that introduced crop and had
the same downstream effect. So the issue is not that
it was GM. The issue is that it was scientifically
I shouldn't even say the issue was scientifically manipulated. It's
that it was a new and basically foreign crop introduced
in a not good way to a culture that already
had a specific practice, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think I think one of the you know,
I think we also contend to be kind of black
or white, like definitely some of the farmers in that area,
you know, we're really happy about being able to have
a rice that they could harvest twice a year and
the financial benefits that can come from that, and some
of them didn't care that they were losing their kind
of indigenous practices that you know, maybe I valued or
the outside world values, but maybe didn't wasn't as important,
you know, to a particular farmer. And so I think
it's important just for me to state that, you know,
I definitely can't say whether that all these technologies have
their good sides and their dark sides, but I do
think in general, you know, when we are introducing a
new crop in a way that's not working collaboratively with
a local community, there are often problems that ensue.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah, I would agree with that completely,
I guess, just to put the final point on it,
because this is not even what your book is about.
One of the things that, yeah, one of the things
I get frustrated by is the fear, Like really it's
kind of the unh uninitiated, un lack of depth that
comes from a fear of a specific technology, and when
that technology becomes either banned or boycotted, very often the
industry will just spend more money and more time working
to get the same outcome using other methods. They're like, Okay,
so I can't make this a GM crop because you're
not going to buy it in the EU. Fine, I'll
spend three times as long to try and produce it
through conventional breeding, and then I'll still sell you the
same freaking crop, but I'll have shuffled around thirty thousand
genes instead of one gene, and it will have taken
way longer, and there might be actually more unintended consequences
at the end of all of it. And I think
that's where I get frustrated and I'm curious about its effects.
Back to bees and honey, because I wonder if that
goes back to that black and white thinking of industrial bad,
monocrop bad, or you know, GM bad. But these are good,
healthy things we can be doing for the bees. Let's
use non chemical let's use organic pesticides or herbicides like copper. Well,
that's not good either, And so it's like, I think
people think that they have an idea of what's best
for the planet based on the naturalistic or the appeal
to nature fallacy, and then they don't even like, no,
they don't even read about this stuff like That's why
it's so important that you do the work you do,
because you're not just saying the bees are dying. Let's
talk about what farmers should do and then not talk
to farmers. They know what they need to.
Speaker 2: Do, yeah, and it's I mean they do, and also
they don't I mean right in the sense that I
mean any farmer is going to know more about how
to manage their orchard than an outsider will one hundred percent.
But a lot of farmers are being advised by crop advisors,
and some of them have I think I can't remember
the exact percentage, but have you know, strong ties to
chemical industries. So what I mean is you know you'll
have uh, a representative from a chemical industry and they
are advising the farmer on which pesticide to spray, and
so you have then a vested interest in higher chemical
use when that happens. And so the farmer doesn't particularly
know exactly what crops, you know, what what chemicals you
know are going to fix what issue, and they rely
on this outside advisor. But when that person is coming
from the chemical industry, you know that that can make
it make us more prone to having more ager chemicals
on our farms. But I want to get to your
point about unintended consequences on that on that kind of
pesticide note, because one issue that's been a bit concerning
for me is the pushback against neo nicketdenoids, not because
I new nicodge nooids are documented as being problematic for bees,
particularly at the sublethal level, but meaning they can have
sub lethal consequences for bees, like affecting their navigational abilities,
affecting health in the hive, affecting honey bee reproductivity. But
they and they can also have lethal effects too, especially
with when a lot of corn and soy seeds are
coated in Unich to nooid dust, and then that when
it's planted, can spread and that dust can be acutely
toxic to bees. And so when there was a lot
during calling the conningclapse disorder kind of when it was
in the news, ne nix became a prime suspect for
you know, what was killing the bees. And there's been
a lot of sort of you know, public outcry about
the use of neuniketenoids. And I would talk to bee
hebers and there were kind of two factions and a
smaller faction was very anti neonis and supported these this
these kind of protests, but a lot of them, I'd
say maybe it these two thirds were actually very afraid
of the public's pushback against neonis. And the reason was
because they were systemic pesticides. They were not acutely toxic,
meaning they don't kill on contact, and beekeepers felt like
they could kind of help their bees survive, you know,
as some kind of exposure from neonix. But if neo
nis were banned, then as you were kind of talking about, farmers,
will you know, then use their older pesticides that they
know work, that are more acutely toxic. And so what
worries me is when we do these like let's just
ban neonis, if you're not talking to farmers about what
tools they're going to use next and helping them use
non toxic or less toxic tools than neonis, then they're
just going to go back to the agrochemicals that they know,
which are more often more toxic, and then we're going
to have, you know, kind of more toxic exposures in
the felt. And so when we are thinking about technologies
again and just coming back to how much we have
to implement tools in partnership with farmers and with beekeepers,
because you know, we can have these unintended consequences of
you remove one tool and you're going to go back
to an actually more dangerous tool instead. And so when
we remove a pesticide, and we have to really understand
what is gonna what the next steps those farmers are
going to take and make sure that they have tools
that are ecologically beneficial, if you know, if that's the
direction we're trying to head in, rather than just taking
a tool away because you know it's politically kind of useful,
or it's the sort of you know, common enemy right
now that you know that we're facing. So and I'm
not here to say, I mean, theodics are problematic, but
if we're going to ban them, we really have to
have other tools for farmers to use because they are
managing food and they're trying to save their crops and
they are struggling and they need tools to be able
to keep their crops alive.
Speaker 1: How much do you think that the sort of citizenry
right because we're the ones voting on these things. We're
the ones often who are are voting with our dollars too,
purchasing things because of the way that they are labeled
or you know, downstream, we have a lot of power
to affect policy that ultimately blows back on areas that
we may be not as well informed about. And so
how much do you think that sort of the even
the conversation about bees comes down to a pull at
your heart strings? You know. I've talked to other kind
of environmentalists and activists and ecologists about the fact that, like,
you know, there's a lot of money out there for elephants,
but there's not so much money for I don't know,
fill in the blank with like a scaly creature or
something without a you know, forur and acute face. And
I think one of the things that I often we
didn't even say it at the beginning here, but I
think that often people forget is that the bees that
were often talking about are domestic bees, right, Like, these
are bees that are raised by keepers that are not
just like native bees that are flying around. Yes, like
we should make that distinction, right, because there are a
lot of native bees as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we have in the US about I
think it's about four thousand native bee species, and honey
bees were imported. They were brought over here by the
colonists in think of sixteen twenty two to Virginia as
the first recorded shipment, and then as colonists spread across
the United States, we took bees with us and we
brought we brought them here for honey and wax, and
also to pollinate crops like apples and alfalfa, which we
grew for and grow for cattle. And bees love pollinating alfalfa.
But they are absolutely an imported, you know, non native species.
And and the truth is the vast majority of our
honeybees are managed livestock. I mean, they're relegated as livestock.
Now you talk to a beekeeper, you go get in
a colony with them, and a lot of them just
love their bees and they talk to them and they're
very sweet with them. And now when they're in a colony,
some of them are just like in and out, you know,
gotta check really quick, Okay, close the hive, next five,
you know. And the management practices differ, but they are,
you know, they are not a native species. And a
lot of our attension has gone to honeybees, and there
has been more funding and research done on honeybees, and
native bees have suffered because it's harder to track their populations.
It's also harder to track their economic benefit, which isn't
because there isn't one. They are amazing pollinators and it's
often they are better pollinators than honeybees with certain crops,
but it's just harder to track it, and so we
don't have as much of a sense their monetary value,
and so it's harder to kind of get grants and
to you know, put sort of government agency support behind
native bees. It's all there, it's just not quite as
robust as for honeybees. And I do think it's important
to really focus on how we need to support all bees,
not just managed bees, and that we need to understand
that they are industrial industrially managed and that is causing
vulnerability for honeybees and other bees as well.
Speaker 1: When we think about these industrially managed bees, these honey
bees that we're discussing, and we you know, you mentioned
that it's much harder to kind of track and to
really be able to look at the numbers with regards
to native bees. Are we mostly looking at managed bees
as a source of the downstream product like wax or
honey or are we also usually calculating in their benefit
as pollinators sort of what is their job from a
I guess accounting, I hate putting it that way, but
an accounting perspective, sure.
Speaker 2: I think what's been interesting is how that's changed. And
so in my first chapter I talked about this transition.
My first and second chapter about this transition from beekeepers
as honey producers, which was their primary role honey and
also wax through the two World Wars. A lot of
people don't know that beekeepers played a massive role in
the World Wars because sugar routes were cut off by
German U boat attacks and so there was this scarcity
of sugar available in the US, but especially in Europe,
and so honey beekeepers. There was this like national call
to the beekeeping community and that like veterans were trying
to be beekeepers. Like the honey industry really expanded during
the Wars, and beekeepers were like honey producers. But after
the war ended, we had cheap sugars back on the market,
including you know, just straight sugar, but then also some
of our artificial sweeteners became popular, like in the fifties,
and so with that competition, demand for honey went down.
And be Heavers had to start looking for alternative income sources.
And around that same time, you know, industrial agriculture, this
this model was spreading throughout the United States because we
were repurposing agrochemicals from the war, like nitrogen into fertilizer
and sorry, ammonia into fertilizer nitrogen. You know, we were
we were using these chemicals for pesticides and fertilizer basically.
And so what happened then was we had, you know,
vast farm operations started to develop, and there weren't native
bees around to pollinate, and so what over time especially
and then and then I guess i'd say with the
almond industry, which really started expanding in the nineties in
a massive and started drawing beekeepers from all over the country.
In the nineties and two thousands, beekeepers really started to
shift how they managed their bees, and they transitioned from
being primarily honey producers to now most of them have
like a fifty to fifty or forty sixty model, where
they're pollinating is like fifty percent of their income or
sixty percent of their income, and honey is like fifty
to forty percent of their income, and they manage bees
differently for pollination, and that is kind of the primary
way they're managing them is for pollination, and then honey
is this kind of secondary income source. And so that
shift in how at least I argue that that shift
is primarily is a big reason why bees are more
vulnerable because they're being exposed to agricultural landscapes more than
they were before. They're being more intensively managed because when
you're pollinating almonds, the more robust, the more colonies you have,
the more money you make. And so you want to
have as many bees as possible, and so you push
your colonies hard so that they are ready to go
in February, and they're not typically ready to go in February.
They're typically ready to pollinate in mass in April. So
you have to feed them supplements and you have to
you know, really boost their numbers. And this this shift
really has transformed the beekeeping industry and the honey bee
and we also are breeding bees that are more productive,
but they are also more susceptible to Varroa mites as well,
and so that's that's kind of the trade off that
we're getting. And so this real, this real push and
shift towards a pollination model over a honey model. You know,
it's it's it's definitely transformed are bees. And the last
thing I would add too, is when you're making honey,
you're trying to find pasture that has very little agrichemicals.
So if your whole operation is mostly around honey production
and maybe you pollinate one crop, then your bees are
mostly being exposed to pest aside free forage. But when
you're having more of a pollinator, then you get more
of that agrochemical exposure and your truck getting trucked around
a lot more. And so those all these little shifts,
you know, have have transformed our bees and the bekeeping
industry as well. You know.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned kind of in passing at one point
that obviously your role or your intentionality in writing this
book and doing your research is not to be prescriptive.
Speaker 2: I'm curious how do.
Speaker 1: You manage that as somebody who is talking to so
many different people, reading so many different sources of information,
helping we the reader of the book sort of understand
the landscape of the problem. Who all of the different
you know, interested parties are. How how do you kind
of square that circle? And have that balance of not
saying and then here's what we should be doing.
Speaker 2: I mean it's uh, especially uh when you're in science
communication and you know, you're writing op eds and it's like,
what should we do? How do we save the bees? Like,
you know, have your last paragraph focus on that, you know?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: And I think that what I try and do and
what I what I how I kind of resolve that
tension for myself was my last three chapters. I they're
my last three chapters focus on solutions to help bees.
And there were like a million solutions. I wanted to
focus on a lot of them coming from within the industry,
but I was worried they wouldn't be super interesting to
people or be too technical, like new ways to grow
bee queens, you know, or to breed bee queens, I
should say, And so I really wanted to make the
last few chapters kind of like what are some things
you could do and and what And to me, one
of the most important things the average reader can do
is to plant forage. And so I I think that's
one thing I am kind of like, yeah, like if
we want to say bees we need more forage, I
mean that is just a scientific fact, we do not
have enough forage bees are dying, because that is one
of the biggest stressers is that we don't have enough
friendly flowers. That's what forage is. When I'm saying that
foods that produce you know, nectar and honey for bees,
and we just don't have enough of it. And so
and I also think the science indicates that pesticides are
problematic for bees, and so limiting pesticides is good for bees.
So I really try and lean on the science, so
I'm not necessarily prescribing what we should do. And it's
also kind of like, if we want to protect bees,
you know, here are the here are the solutions that
seem to be working or have you know, are really helping.
So my main goal in the book was to really
highlight stories and to you know, shine a light on
just really interesting solutions. And so I think the way
I avoided being prescriptive was really telling people's stories, letting
or letting other people kind of tell their stories, quoting
them a lot, telling them, telling what was their their
process of trying to you know, get on this path
of helping bees. And but I do kind of have
a prescriptiveness at the end I mean, I do say,
like I draw on Michael Pollen's eat food and not
too much mostly plants, which I think is from indefensive food.
And I was like, you know, okay, if I came
up with something similar, what would it be. And and
it was, you know, a plant flowers, limit pesticides, and
share the land. Have more of a of a sharing
the land ethic than owning the land and doing whatever
we want with it ethic. But at the end of
the day, you know, my job here is to report
on science. It's to elevate the voices you know that
came up in my research and and then let people
you know, follow how they are moved, you know, by
by the information, by the stories, you know, try to
find a path to solution that makes sense for them,
that inspires them. And at the end of the day,
I sort of feel like my role is just to
share what I've learned and you know, and then the
reader can take do with that what they will. That's
that's their responsibility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And do you do you plan to continue down
that path? Especially regarding this topic, have you found that
your interest has been shifting or branching out or widening
or narrowing over time as you continue to dig deep
and write about these issues.
Speaker 2: It's a great Yeah. It's funny because after at some
point while writing this book, I was like, I am done.
I'm so tired of getting BE paraphernalia, you know, like
I was getting so sick abees. But it kind of
comes back to those beekeepers and I, like I said,
I'm friends with many of them now, I mean I've
been in touch with many of them for you know,
twelve thirteen years, and and so I am still working
on BE stuff. I don't want to get into too
much detail, but my next project, we'll look at honey.
Honey is their most adulterated or considered the third most
adulterated food in the world. And a lot of what
happens is honey is coming from outside the United States
and it is adulterated. I've had conversations in India with
Indian bee heapers, and there's just kind of common knowledge
that a lot of the honey coming from abroad is
like maybe one part honey, four parts something else, some
other kind of syrup. And so yeah, so my hope
is too and then that is just really cheapening the
honey market and making it so difficult for bee heapers
to maintain their operations because honey is just so cheap
and they can't compete with I think the honey is
sometimes twice as much or sorry, twice is cheap as
what it costs to produce, right, and so they are
really struggling. And I didn't get as much into the
honey market when I was writing this book because I
kind of was seeing I'm like, oh, this needs to
be its own whole thing, and so I do talk
about it a bit in the first couple of chapters,
but but I'm hoping to dive into it more deeply,
and they're kind of clamoring, like, come on, let's talk
about this. Yeah, yeah, So that's that's probably gonna be.
The next project is something about the honey market and
how how this global honey market really affects beekeepers and
effects all of us because we don't really know what
we're getting in that jar.
Speaker 1: That is fascinating, and I am a honey fanatic. I
would say that it is my most commonly purchased I say,
honey and bar soap. Those are the two things I
always buy when I travel if no matter where I
am on the globe. If I can buy local honey
and local like a local bar of soap, I always.
Speaker 2: Bring them home with me.
Speaker 1: And then whenever I finally get to crack open that
jar or you know, replace the bars open my in
my shower, I get to kind of be transported back
to where I was and remember my trip. And I
like to buy consumables, but I definitely I put honey
in my tea. I eat honey with everything I love.
Speaker 2: I love it. I have to tell you I had
the coolest experience on that note when I was in India.
My husband's Indian, and so we go. We've been going, like,
you know, the past couple of Christmases, and so this
last winter we were there and I learned about this
amazing organization that works with small beekeepers and I'm talking
like farmers that make under two dollars a day, and
they train this nonprofit trains farmers how to grow how
to farm bees basically, and so how to keep bees.
But what's cool is that they are keeping native bees,
which is appis. So we have Appis Malivera bees, which
is the European honey bee commonly known or called that
and they have Appis serana, which is commonly called the
Asian honey bee because it's primarily in Asia and it
can handle a different climate than the European bees can.
And so anyway, I got to try honey from Appiserana
bees and Stingless bees, another native bee in India, and
it was just phenomenal, Like it was so cool because
you cannot get that honey here in the US or
Europe because for reasons I'll go into in the next book.
But it was just so incredible to taste honey from
a different honey producing bee species that was really special.
And I'm like you, I often get honey when I
travel and bring it back with me, and it really
is incredible to just when you can get especially like
as close to a single variety as possible, varietal as possible,
like meade from cherries or sunflower, you can really get
to know the taste of a certain of the nectar,
you know, and the honey produce from that crop, and
it really connects you to the landscape in a way
that is really so I love trying honey. I always
encourage people to like buy from local beekeepers and you know,
try to try different varietals of honey because it's it
really tastes different depending on which plant it's coming from,
and it's cool to get to know that I love it.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've learned so much, and there's obviously
so so, so much more in the book to learn everybody.
The book is Bitter Honey, Big Eggs, Threat to Bees
and the Fight to Save Them by doctor Jenny Durant. Jenny,
thank you so much for being here with us today.
Speaker 2: It's such a pleasure, such a fun conversation.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me absolutely and everybody listening. Thank you
for coming back week after week. I'm really looking forward
to the next time we all get together to talk.
Nerdy