Dr. Jonathan Dear, a small animal internal medicine specialist turned passionate beekeeper, explores the fascinating world of honey bees. Join us as Dr. Dear shares his journey from hobbyist to expert, uncovering the intricate relationship between bees and our ecosystem, and the vital role they play in food production.
We delve into the challenges faced by beekeepers today, including the impact of legislation on antibiotic use in food-producing animals and the importance of veterinary involvement in beekeeping. Dr. Dear explains the science of bee behavior, the hierarchy within a hive, and the unique characteristics of the queen bee, as well as the various roles bees play in maintaining their colonies.
With a focus on the resurgence of interest in local honey and the environmental factors affecting bee populations, we discuss the significance of pollinators in our food supply and the concept of One Health, which connects human, animal, and environmental health. From the curious nature of bee communication to the latest advancements in bee health management, this episode is a treasure trove of information for both seasoned beekeepers and curious listeners alike.
Ucdavisvetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/jonathan-david-dear
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Beekeeping And Protecting The Ecosystem – Dr. Jonathan David Dear
Welcome to Speaking of Pets. I’m Dr. Alice Novotny Jeromin, a board-certified veterinary dermatologist.
I’m Janet Novotny King, the doctor’s sister. I am not board-certified in anything. I’m a pet owner, lover, and rescuer. I’m here to be Alice’s sidekick and help our audience understand better how to be the best pet parents they can possibly be. We love that.
Our special guest is Dr. Jonathan Dear, who’s a board-certified Small Animal Internal Medicine Specialist at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Dear got his vet degree from the University of Georgia. Janet, you’ll be happy to hear that.
Georgia Tech is anti-UGA.
Sorry. He then went to UC Davis, where he did his residency and his Master’s. His special areas of interest are upper respiratory, urinary, and small animal infectious diseases. Why are we going to talk about honey bees with Dr. Dear?
It’s because that’s his hobby.
How A Small Animal Internal Medicine Specialist Got Into Beekeeping
He’s a hobbyist beekeeper. He has developed modules to instruct other veterinarians in Apis culture. Apis is the prefix for bee. He’s done this along with collaborators with extension agents from UC Davis and Oregon State University. This episode is all about honey bees, how they are so vital to the health of the food we eat, and also to our economy. Welcome, Dr. Dear. How did a small animal internal medicine specialist get involved with honey bees? Is the proper way to say it just bees?
What’s the buzz?
Honey bees, to be specific, because there are lots of different types of bees out there. There are native bees and other pollinators. Honey bees and Apis mellifera are to be extra specific, and so are the European honey bees. Those are the ones that you see in colonies and are used for honey production. It’s an interesting question. I have been a beekeeper for about many years. I am a hobbyist beekeeper.
My husband read a book many years ago called The Shamanic Way of the Bees. It’s about a particular way of beekeeping that is very much in touch with the bees and nature. When he read that, he wanted to be a beekeeper. Fast forward to when we were married and we had a home, it was a good time to try a new hobby, so we did that. That was my background.
We did a co-op thing initially. What you and probably a lot of people don’t know is that beekeeping is like having a pet. It’s an expensive hobby. You have to pay for the bees. You have to pay for the equipment. You have to pay for the suit. If your bees die, you have to buy new ones. We did a co-op with our family where we asked everybody to give us $50 or $100 to be part of our little bee family. When we harvest honey, we would give them honey as their dividends. That was how we got started a long time ago.
Fast forwarding to why I am doing it as a veterinarian. You might know, Alice or Janet, or you probably don’t know, that in 2018, the FDA buttoned the hatches about antibiotic prescribing in the US. For a long time, if you were in production facilities, like you were raising cattle, poultry, or bees, and you thought you had a bacterial disease in your colonies. You would go to the feed store and buy tylosin, oxytetracycline, or something like that and give it to your animal. In a lot of ways, that was done both to treat disease and as a growth promotion in a lot of these animals. Animals sometimes grow better when they’re on antibiotics.
Clearly, that’s not a good thing to be giving cattle buckets of antibiotics. In 2018, the FDA changed the rules and said, “If you want to give antibiotics to a food-producing animal, you’ve got to have a veterinarian involved.” For cattlemen and poultry farmers, that’s not a big deal. They were already working with veterinarians. It did rein in their use of antibiotics, which is good, but they already had vets there working with them, such as production vets and whatnot.
Before this, you could go as a cattle owner and buy it over the counter. You didn’t need a prescript. I had no idea.
Not all antibiotics. There were only certain ones. It was like the Wild West. There were very few rules. You could do what you wanted to, then 2018 happens. You’ve got to use either a prescription, which you’re all familiar with, or what’s called a veterinary feed directive. Which is a different word for a prescription. If you use a veterinary feed directive, you put an antibiotic in their food rather than in water, for instance. If you want to do either of those things, you need a veterinarian.
Believe it or not, honey bees are food-producing animals. They are insects, but they are food-producing animals. We eat their honey. Some people eat royal jelly, which is a product from bees. Propolis is something else that is sometimes used in natural remedies. There’s beeswax. A lot of food gets into our food system via bees. The challenge is that if you’re giving them antibiotics, which is rarely happening, to be honest. If you do, then that could end up in the honey, the wax, the propolis, and whatever.
I should give a background about what kind of internal medicine I do. I do mostly infectious diseases. I care a lot about antibiotic stewardship, resistant bacteria, and prescribing the right drug. That happened, and I was talking to some people who work here at Davis in the Entomology Section who do a lot of bee stuff. They focus exclusively on bees.
We got to talking, saying, “We’re uncomfortable bedfellows all of a sudden.” There are beekeepers who are used to doing their own thing, and they have never interacted with veterinarians before. Veterinarians are used to herd medicine or production medicine. These are concepts they know about, but they’re not trained in beekeeping. They know nothing about bees. They know nothing about the diseases. We got together to develop training courses to bring veterinarians up to speed on this thing.
It’s so fascinating. I was listening to a couple of shows about bees and beekeepers. They seem like a unified group. I’m sure there’s dissension among certain hive people, but they seem to care about the health of these bees. Certain people were driving 500 miles to go pick up some bees instead of having them sent. There’s a lot to this.
Three Big Types Of Beekeepers
There are three big types of beekeepers. There are commercial beekeepers. I forget what the official definition is, but they have something like over 500 hives. They come to California in the spring for almond pollination. They go to Texas and Florida for blueberries, melons, and whatnot. They do a lot. They know a lot about beekeeping. They’ve done this for a long time. There are what are called the sideliners who are in between. They have a lot of hives. They know a lot about beekeeping, but maybe it’s not their full-time job, or they do other things.
There are people like me who are hobbyists. Now, I only have one hive, but we’ve had up to five hives at a time. There are different philosophies and mentalities among those three groups, but in general, you’re right. Everybody cares about their bees as a food producer cares about their flock, too. It’s both economically important to them, but you get to know these animals, too. It’s crazy to think that you get to know honey bees, and they get to know you, too.
Alice, that’s your queen question.
I’m going to ask that, but I have to tell him in one of the shows I was listening to, she’s a veterinarian, and she was a practice manager. I’m like, “This must not be the right podcast because I wanted to hear about bees.” She took what she learned from bees to manage her practice because they’re so social. She said, “I got burned out, and I wanted to take off for a while. I took eight months as a sabbatical, and I went all over the world, including Montana.”
I thought, “That’s in the US, but okay.” She spent all this time with beekeepers, and she said it was like her Zen. Now, she raises bees. It’s like people who work with turtles. They’re their own thing, and they’re very spiritual with the turtle. It’s amazing to me that bees are so busy that you could find that very relaxing. You can, apparently.
It’s interesting you say that. We had the SAVMA Symposium here at Davis. SAVMA is the Student American Veterinary Medical Association. They were here for their annual symposium, and we hosted a bee lab for them. I was talking to this group of students, and many of them had never interacted with bees at all.
They had taken our web modules because that was our prerequisite, to learn a little bit about the biology and whatnot. I was giving them this pep talk because you could tell some of them were a little nervous about it. We’re doing a hive inspection, so we’re pulling the frames apart and licking. One of the things I said to them was exactly that. You’ve got to be Zen. You’ve got to be calm because bees pick up on things.
It’s like what horses do.
They use pheromones a lot within the hive. Pheromones are a big part of how they communicate. They pick up on our pheromones, too. Partly, you’ve got to be calm because you don’t want to trigger them. Sometimes, they get a little aggro if they’re done with you, you’ve been in the hype for a long time, or it’s windy, or something like that. They’ll start buzzing you. They’ll pop in your face. You have a veil on, but they’ll come. They’re warning you saying, “Leave us alone.”
Human nature would be to get them out of the way. You can’t do that because that pisses them off. You’re going to get stung probably. What you have to do is breathe in, maybe take a step back, and give them a break for a second. You’ve got to continue on with your job, but you’ve got to work with them and not let the anxiety that you might feel get to you because it’s going to have a negative impact on the whole interaction.
If you get bees out of the way, you will probably get stung. You have to breathe in, take a step back, and give them a break. Share on XYou wear the white suit every time you check them?
I do. It’s not always the white suit. I always wear a veil. The veil is the hat with the hood thing that goes over to protect your face and your neck. I usually wear some kind of glove. Exam gloves are often what we use. As a beginner, I used lamb skin or sheepskin gloves. If you’re going to be doing a lot, sometimes having the entire suit on is helpful because you’re more likely to aggravate them a little bit. Naturally, bees don’t want to sting you. That’s not their MO. When they sting you, they die. They know that, so stinging is a last resort.
At the same point, they will sting you if you’re endangering their hive. If you work with a lot of bees, you’re probably going to get there with some of the bees. If it’s just 1 or 2 hives, having a veil is enough because you might be in and out. They don’t mind. They get used to you. If you’re doing a lot, like if you’re treating them or you’re inspecting every frame, you’re probably a little bit more likely to have a bee that wants to see you away, so to speak. Having the full protection on is more helpful.
Recent Resurgence In Local Honeys And Honey Bees
There seems to have been a whole resurgence, not just in beekeeping, but in local honeys and the importance of bees.
You hear both sides, Dr. Dear, that there are not enough honey bees and there’s an abundance of honey bees. What’s the scuttle on that?
I don’t know if I have the answer to that. I do think that there is a greater recognition of the importance of pollinators, in general, in our food supply. The pollinators play a huge role, whether that be honey bees or native pollinators. We talked about them being food-producing animals because of the stuff they produce. We also need to consider that they’re food-producing animals and the fact that many of the things that we take for granted that we get from a grocery store wouldn’t be there or be in much more limited supply if it weren’t for pollination.
I don’t know exactly why that’s more in the forefront. It has always been important. In the 2000s or so, there was this thing called colony collapse disorder that became big news, where honey bee hives were being lost across the country. That made its way into the mainstream a little bit. People care about that a little bit more. It’s tied into climate change, too. People care about climate change.
One of the things that’s cool about being involved with beekeeping from a veterinary perspective is this concept of one health, too. I’m sure you know what one health is, but probably a lot of readers have never heard this before. One health is the concept that, as a species, humans, our health, our success, and our wellness are tied intimately to the health of other animals, the health of plants, and the health of environments. It’s a no-brainer. We all know that, but we forget that a little bit and think that we can go at it alone.
As humans, our health, success, and well-being are intimately tied to the health of other animals, plants, and the entire environment. Share on XBees are a great example of you’ve got to think about the entire ecosystem. Bees are so important to us for food-producing. They rely on us in large part for these commercial bees, but they are also being impacted by pesticide use and climate change. Wildfires are big threats to bee producers in California, for instance. There are a whole lot of reasons why people care more about bees than they used to.
How much honey can you expect to yield from one hive? Are all hives the same size?
No. They’re all different. There are some standard sizes. The standard boxes you see come in medium, deep, and honey super. Those boxes that stack on top of each other. The standard ones are what are called deeps. There are ten frames in each box, and they’re parallel to each other. If you were to extract honey from one of those full deep boxes, what I recall is that it weighs about 50 or 60 pounds, and most of that is honey. There is some wood, wax, and everything. When we’ve extracted a deep, we’ve gotten about 3 to 5 gallons out of one of those.
Enough for the family that you’re sharing.
They’re investors, so you had to pay them off.
We have to give them their dues. It’s a lot, and that’s just from one hive.
What’s the difference between unfiltered honey and raw honey?
Isn’t it all raw because it’s not processed?
Mother used to buy raw honey, remember?
It’s not processed. Do you know what I’m saying?
Do you run it through a filter or something? I don’t know.
Most people don’t. It’s raw.
You take it right out of there.
One of the things about honey is that some people think about it for its health benefits. You might think about it for its allergen components. It can desensitize us. There are a lot of reasons that that’s good for you. I don’t know if any of you have children, but you may or may not have learned that you can’t give honey to children.
In the first year.
Do you know why?
No. I just knew it was a big no from the pediatrician.
It’s botulism. It’s the Clostridium botulinum. I don’t remember if it’s the actual toxin or the organism, but there are very low levels in honey. Newborns and infants are very susceptible to it. Maybe there is pasteurized honey. That’s the only thing I can think about. I’ve never seen pasteurized honey, but maybe that’s a thing. Usually, it’s raw. I have never seen it labeled as filtered. You’re right. It often says unfiltered.
I’ve never seen filtered. What’s manuka honey? Is that a different species of bee? Manuka honey has healing properties topically.
It’s always from New Zealand.
It’s from a flower.
It’s from the acacia tree, or some sort of acacia. Honey is nectar that has been processed and evaporated, basically. It’s an invert sugar that has been digested by the honey bee, and they add enzymes to it. This is the gross thing about it. They regurgitate it back into the cell, and then they sit and fan it. They fan it to evaporate the water. It’s just nectar. Whatever they were eating is going to be what goes into the honey. That’s why you see orange blossom honey or wildflower honey. It depends on where the bees were and what they were eating.
A Glimpse Into The Life Of A Queen Bee
There’s such a taste difference. Janet, I’ve bought different kinds of honey, and some of it’s strong, and some of it’s light. It’s fascinating. Here’s my queen question. What’s the deal with the queen?
You’ve got to have the queen for the other bees to stay there, right?
Do they ever move?
Do they have fighting queens or not?
They do have fighting queens. In one hive, there are three types of bees. There’s going to be the queen that you asked about, the workers, and the drones. This is going to go a little bit nerdy.
That’s okay. We love nerdy.
The bees are what are called haploid diploid organisms. Humans are diploid. That means we have 23 chromosomes, and we’ve got 2 copies of them. One from our mom, and one from our dad. Female bees are diploid. Similarly, they have 1 set of chromosomes from the queen and 1 set of chromosomes from their father. Males are haploid. Males are the drones. I’m not sure if the chromosomes are from the father or the mother. I should know that. Anyway, they only have one set of chromosomes.
You’ll look it up. I know you will. That drives me nuts when I know I know something, and then I don’t.
The queens and workers are both diploid. The only thing that separates them is what they’re fed. When a queen lays an egg, they have these tiny eggs. You can see them with your bare eye, but they’re tiny. For the first couple of days, 2 to 3 days, all eggs are fed royal jelly. That’s nutrient-rich. It has lots of growth promoters and other things that help the egg to germinate and form into a larva.
The thing that differentiates a worker from a queen is that a queen gets fed royal jelly her entire larvae hood, whatever that’s called, until she pupates, whereas workers have it for the first couple days, and then they’re fed honey, pollen, and whatever else they need. There must be something epigenetic about it. Something about getting fed royal jelly allows her to develop in a very different way from a worker bee.
If you ever see a picture of a queen versus a worker, they look very different. Queens have an elongated body. They have a skinnier, elongated body. Sometimes, they have fewer stripes on them. They’re going to be in charge of reproduction. They maintain the hive, so to speak. Those are the two. Drones are haploid. If a queen wants to lay drones, she lays eggs that are unfertilized. I answered my own question. They’re ova that are unfertilized.
Let’s say the queen died for some reason. Maybe it’s because of old age or something has happened to her. You’re inspecting it, and you squished her, or she dropped out of the hive. What happens is that because of the pheromones, the bees recognize there’s no queen anymore. They say it’s not queenright. Bees get agitated when there’s no queen there. What they will do is recognize there’s not a queen, and they know they have to make another queen.
What happens is they’ll start feeding a handful, maybe 5 or 6 cells, of royal jelly to make a new queen. I forgot what the incubation period or the gestation period is for queens. It’s eighteen days or something around that. A queen will hatch. She knows that she wants to be the only queen. There’s only ever 1 queen in a hive, or there should only be 1 queen in a hive. What happens is a fight to the death. She will go and find any other queens that are either hatched or queen cells and go and kill them all. It is pretty vicious.
How do they kill them?
They sting them. Queens are the only bees that can sting multiple times without eviscerating themselves.
Queens are the only bees that can sting multiple times without eviscerating themselves. Share on XIt’s like the queen consort. It’s like a Twilight Zone or something. Whoever found all this out? This is fascinating.
It is wild. It’s a whole different little ecosystem that’s happening there. She is the queen. She has all the workers. The workers are going to take care of her. The thing about the queen that people don’t realize is that everyone thinks, “Being a queen must be great. You have people doting on you and people feeding you.” That is all true. What they don’t know is that the queen only leaves the hive once, with one exception.
The only time she’s going to leave the hive is when she goes to mate with drones. I talked to you about drones already. Drones are going to be produced by all other hives, too. There’s this area in the atmosphere called the drone zone. It’s about a mile up or something where there are lots of drones, and the queen goes up there.
It’s like a brothel.
The wildest thing is that the queen goes up there, and she mates with multiple drones. After the drone mates with her, they die. It has something to do with their reproductive organs being pulled out from inside their body or something horrendous like that.
How sad.
This is incredible. Go on.
I had no idea.
The reproductive things get sucked out. She takes a private jet up, has a good time, kills all those men, and comes back down.
She knows exactly where to come back down.
It’s an amazing thing. She knows where to go back to. She’s got this thing called a spermatheca, which stores all the sperm in her body so that when she’s ready to lay eggs, she can then fertilize the eggs as they’re being laid. That’s the one time that she ever leaves the hive. People think of her as the queen, and that’s her name, but she’s a servant. All she does for the rest of her life is lay eggs. She lays about 1,000 eggs a day.
What’s the lifespan of a queen? How long do they live?
It varies.
There’s no injury to her, I mean.
A natural lifespan of a queen in a healthy hive is about 3 to 5 years. She’s the oldest out of the hive. Commercial beekeepers will do what’s called re-queening most years. They will pull the queen out and put a new queen in because young queens tend to lay more eggs. They’ll have a more productive colony if they have a young queen.
Janet, did you have any idea that all this was going on? There must be a certain time of the year. Janet and I are from Ohio. She’s not going a mile up in January. It’s got to be nice weather.
They only come out of the hive for scavenging and foraging activities when it’s nice weather. In California, we have our hive in our backyard. It doesn’t get nearly as cold as Ohio, but it gets cold. You will see on a cold day maybe one bee coming out every 20 minutes, and that’s partly because they may need to use the restroom. They don’t do that in the hive. They go outside. They’re clean little creatures.
I’m scared because I’m interested in this. This is fascinating.
How far do they travel? Don’t they go two miles away and then come back?
I’ve read anything up to eight miles. There have been some studies where they put little radio monitors on them, and they go a long way. Getting back to your question, in the cold season, they’re only going to go outside the hive if it’s necessary. Maybe it’s to take a dead bee out or do something that’s critical. When plants start flowering, and there are lots going on, that’s when the hives start building in size.
There are going to be drones that are born. There are going to be new queens. Queens are born throughout the year because something could happen to a queen at any point. Making a queen and the reproduction phase happen anytime the hive is active. In California, it would be from March through November or so. In colder places, it takes a shorter period of time.
Teaching And Learning About Master Beekeeping
Are you teaching beekeeping?
Yes and no. I am still a hobbyist. I think it’s fascinating. I’ve read a lot about it, and we’ve been part of a beekeeping club for a little while, but I recognize that I am not a master beekeeper. Like there are master gardener associations, there are master beekeeper clubs. We have one in California. The people I work with are the people who teach master beekeeping.
What my role has been, and what I see my role doing is trying to get veterinarians interested in it. What that looks like is that we do a discussion in the second year of the curriculum here with our population health block. They’re learning about epidemiology and herd health. Then, we do this pollinator health session with them to introduce them to the concept, like, “Maybe you should consider dealing with bees.”
In the US, it’d be unlikely that being a beekeeping vet or a bee vet would be 100% your job. If you live in a place like Montana, Florida, Texas, or California, there are a lot of bees here. You could maybe have a side business. If you do food animal practice, you’re going to be in an area where there are bees already, and you can help out as needed. My role is to try to get vets interested in doing it. There are some great organizations. The Honey Bee Vet Consortium is one of them, which has resources about beekeeping for veterinarians. They are way more knowledgeable and skilled than I am.
For you and your husband, and be honest, is it 50/50, the workload with these bees?
Not at all. He’s the big-time beekeeper. I’m riding on his coattails. He has done a lot more work. I enjoy it. I like this part where I can mesh vet med with it. At the same time, I work in a teaching hospital here. I’m an internist. I deal with dogs and cats all day long. I’m not at home. He works from home, so he sees the bees. He works with them a lot more. It has gone up and down over our beekeeping career. He wears the bee suit in the relationship.
Varroa Destructor: The Biggest Health Threat To Bees
I have to ask you about the virus and the mite transmission. Is it true that it’s a matter of time before everyone’s affected, as far as bees?
First of all, what are you talking about? What mites?
I can explain a little bit. Probably the biggest health threat that is a disease health threat to bees is a mite called the Varroa destructor. It’s pretty small, but you can see it with your bare eyes.
I was going to ask you. You can see that mite.
The mite must be small.
They’re about the size of the tip of a pen. They’re this larvae-looking thing. As they’re about to pupate, they get capped over with wax. These Varroa go into them, latch on to the bees, and suck out whatever might suck out of you. It’s called hemolymph in insects. That’s the way they live, but they also transmit diseases.
One of the things they transmit that’s pretty well-documented is something called deformed wing virus. The bees are born, and they’ve got these funky-looking wings that don’t look like they work very well. They look like they’re folded. Sometimes, they’re odd-shaped. They’re smaller. I have no idea how well they can fly. I would imagine it impedes their ability to fly.
The good thing is that bees do a lot that is not flying. They have a lot of roles in the hive, too. They have nurse roles. They have the ones who are taking care of the queen. They have funereal bees. They take the dead bees out. They have guard bees who try to sting you if you get in them. The last they have typically before they die is a forager. That’s when they go find nectar and pollen.
Getting back to your question, is it going to affect all bees? The hope is not because Varroa has been around in the US for twenty-ish years or so, maybe a little bit more than that. It’s still a big problem, but we’re learning more about it. We’re learning about better ways to treat it and better ways to breed what are called hygienic bees, which are bees that are better at getting rid of them.
There are vaccines that are being produced, too. There’s one that I’ve read about for Varroa, but there are other vaccines that are commercially available for other bee diseases. We’re moving to a place where, hopefully, we can manage this better. I can tell you that with effective treatment, you can minimize the mite load, and thus, the likelihood of these diseases is much lower.
If your hive gets this thing, is there nothing to get rid of it? There’s no treatment?
There is treatment. There are treatments that are approved. I think it’s the USDA that approves miticides. There are a whole lot of things. There are some pretty natural things. Thymol is one product, which is the product from thyme. It’s concentrated. There’s a thing called HopGuard, also, which is a product derived from hop. A lot of these things are in nature already and have insecticidal properties.
There are other things that are also natural, but are more chemically-derived, called formic acid and oxalic acid. They are things that you treat the hive with to try to kill the mites. The problem is, they’re insecticides. You’re trying to keep them at a level that is going to kill the mites but not kill the bees. It’s a delicate balance of maintaining that so that, in particular, you try not to kill the queen. That’s a devastating loss to kill the queen. That does happen with some of these treatments.
The Food and Drug Administration probably doesn’t want the insecticides in the honey, either.
As a consumer, you wouldn’t want them. If you put thymol all on a hive while they’re storing honey, it’s not going to taste very good. Some of those products are naturally in the hive already, so maybe they’re less of a concern. Oxalic acid, which I’ve read about, is a naturally occurring compound. It might already be there. Certainly, with hops or thyme, it may not be your cup of tea to have honey that tastes like that.
This has been fascinating. Alice, we’ve got to wrap it up.
I don’t mean to sit here with my mouth open, but there’s so much. Think of the society that they have. Dr. Dear was saying they have the funeral people. Who knew?
The hunters and gatherers.
The queen.
There’s a lot. The other cool thing about them is that they are all individual creatures, but a lot of times, people refer to the hive as a superorganism. The hive itself is the organism rather than an individual. You can see that in the way they behave. There’s this selflessness of stinging the intruder to defend the hive. They have this groupthink in terms of the way they operate. They share food. They bring each other up. It is fascinating. They’re cool species to work with.
No poop or pee in the hive.
They’re like cats. They’re fastidious.
Dr. Dear’s Pet Or Human (Or Bee) Peeve
This has been so informative. We have to ask you our guest question, though. What is your pet, human, or bee peeve?
What is my pet peeve?
It could be about a human.
I’m going to go back to the bees. I got asked this question when I was talking to students about what the biggest misnomer about bees is. It’s a pet peeve also because it gives bees a bad name. People often say, “I don’t like bees. They’re aggressive.” That’s not true. Bees are not aggressive at all. They can be defensive. If you jump into their hive and shake them around, then they’re not going to like you.
Those insects that are buzzing around you at the picnic and trying to get your food are not bees. Those are probably wasps or hornets. Every insect has its role. I don’t want anything to do with those ones, though. They can be a pest. Honey bees are calm, docile, and important. They get a bad name, unjustifiably so.
Every insect has its role. Honey bees are calm, docile, and important. They get a bad name, and unjustifiably so. Share on XIt’s improving because people are caring more about that. You also see more honey bee logo stuff, which can’t be bad. You don’t see a lot of devil logos.
Also, roach logos. There is a potential there.
Before we go, what pets do you have, Dr. Dear?
I’m petless with the exception of bees. We had a dog and a cat for years. It’s been three years since we lost our cat. I miss having both of them around. When the right creature wanders back into our lives, we’ll probably get another cat first. Right now, it’s just the bees and a lot of travel because we don’t have pets.
You’re right. The travel part is on hold when you have pets. I agree.
It’s hard.
Thank you so much. This has been fabulous. I have to thank Dr. Karl Jandrey for getting me in touch with you. That could be a good thing or a bad thing for you.
It’s great.
Dr. Jandrey was raving about you. He said, “You’ve got to talk to Dr. Dear about bees.” This was wonderful. Thank you so much.
My pleasure. It was nice talking to you and meeting you both, too.
Janet, do you want to wrap it up?
Yes, let’s wrap it up. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate our audience. If you have any questions, be sure to email us. Have a great day. Enjoy some good honey. I’ll appreciate it a little more.
Thanks, everyone.
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About Dr. Jonathan David Dear
Dr. Jonathan Dear is a board-certified small animal internal medicine specialist and associate professor at the University of California, Davis. A graduate of the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Dear completed his residency at UC Davis. Dr. Dear also completed a master’s degree in clinical research at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Dear’s clinical interests include urinary and respiratory medicine, while his research interests also include small animal infectious diseases. Dr. Dear is the service chief of the small animal medicine service and assistant director of the small animal hospital in the William Pritchard Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at UC Davis. In his spare time, Dr. Dear is a hobbyist beekeeper and has developed web modules to introduce veterinarians to apiculture with collaborators from extension agents at UC Davis and Oregon State University.