Chemical-Free Varroa Treatment, Honey Bee Dad Jokes & More!

0:00 Welcome, welcome to Be Love Bee Keeping presented by our great friends over at Man Lake. We're going to start off with something just a little bit different today. We've given a little vacation to our buddy the not real Jeff Foxworthy, and we're going to try something today I think we'll probably only do it once because it may fall flat on its face. But here we go. We're going to do a lightning round of honeybee jokes. Maybe call them dad honeybee jokes. Are you ready? Here we go. Why do bees have sticky hair? Because they use honeycombs. What's a beekeeper's favorite type of music? Bebop. Why did the beekeeper go to therapy? Because he had too many un-be-lievable issues.

0:45 What do you call a bee that's having a bad hair day? A frizz bee. I should apologize now. And by the way, Man Lake does not endorse or think these are funny. Why did the bees get married? Because they found their honey. What do you call a bee that can't make up its mind? A maybe. Why do beekeepers stay so calm? Because they know how to handle a buzzkill. Why don't bees apologize after stinging you? Because they're too busy to care. Ha ha ha ha! How do bees celebrate a victory with a hive five? Why do bees hum? Because they forgot the lyrics. What's a honeybee's favorite type of relationship? A long-term honeymoon phase.

1:33 What's a bee's favorite novel? The Great Gats Bee. What's a bee's least favorite weather? Cloudy with a chance of fly swatters. And my friend said, if you get stung by a bee, just rub mud on it. I said, okay, but what if it flies away first? If you love those dad jokes, send an email to eric at belovebekeeping.com. And if you didn't, go ahead and send an email to no such email address at belovebekeeping.com.

2:18 Today we're headed over to France to have a discussion with multi-generational beekeeper Pascal Brunner to discuss his new chemical free way of treating Varroa mites. I know there are a million different philosophies on treating or not treating Varroa, but I say to everybody out there, keep it up. The more people working on this problem, the better. All right, let's jump right into it. I would like to welcome our very special guest to the show today, Pascal Brunner, all the way from Switzerland. How are you today? Hello there. It's great to be here, Eric. Thanks a lot for the invitation, and I'm really looking forward to this podcast session with you. Well, you're welcome. What part of Switzerland are you in?

3:04 We're in the German speaking part of Switzerland, close to Zurich. I bet it's beautiful. I just picture a winter wonderland. And before we started recording, we were talking skiing. That's for another podcast someday, but I've got to get over there, and you've got to get to our Utah mountains where we have the greatest snow on earth. Exactly. I think we share a lot with that. And indeed, Switzerland is a very small country. So within two hours, you're in our mountains. And yeah, I'm not sponsored by Switzerland Tourism, but I have to say I love the mountains. It looks absolutely beautiful. I have not been there yet. It's on my list. But I'll tell you what I do picture is the summertime with the Green Mountain Valleys and the cow with the big bell. And that whole thing that I'm sure is very cliche, but we'll have to hook up there sometime. Yeah, sure. I mean, you can definitely find that as well.

4:03 And if you're lucky, you even find some wild bees flying around in the alps. That's always amazing if you're up in the alps. And then you see, you know, sometimes they're a little bit bigger, like the bumblebees. Sometimes they're a little bit smaller, really specific to the specific area they live in. So that's always a highlight, not just, you know, seeing honeybees, but also the wild bees. So the flora and fauna is quite interesting. And there's a lot of diversity. Well, today we're going to be talking about a product that you and your team have developed that is correct me if I get this wrong. It is a chemical free way to treat Varroa mites. That's absolutely correctly. And I'm excited to hear about it, because I have found for the vast, vast, vast majority of people, we are incapable of controlling them without some kind of chemical. So I can't wait to hear what you guys are doing. But first, let's talk about beekeeping for a minute. What is it like keeping bees in a mountainous place like Switzerland?

5:07 I myself have been on quite some farms all over the world. So I've seen beekeeping in various areas, in various forms. And I think the main difference is that, especially like in the in the German speaking area where I live, we tend to keep bees in little homes, basically. So we put up a little, you can imagine it like a trailer or like a cottage. And we then put our hives inside there and give them like a really good, really good, especially in the wintertime, or when it's becoming a bit colder, we give them really good warmth to make it through the winter. And I think that's as well one of the successes why our loss rates are still relatively low, around 15, 20%, compared to other parts of the world where we see losses being way more up, up to 45, 50%, than I've seen in a recent episode you spoke about. Another spike in yearly losses.

6:06 So yeah, I think giving it or that's that's probably the major difference. We have as well, obviously, different bee races. We have the Melifera, Melifera, we have the Karnika, which is very popular. So this is rather, I would say, commonly shared among different countries. But the beekeeping style working in a in a home, this is a little bit special to Switzerland. Well, that is something that looks so cool to me. I've looked at the Slovidian AZ hives. Are you similar to theirs? Yeah, it's quite comparable. There are obviously as well some differences. Like, you know, in the Slovenian hives, normally you're able to pull out each in every frame directly, because like they are put in a way that their direction phase is the the hive entrance. While in most of the Swiss hives, it's like perpendicular with a 90 degrees angle to the entrance. So if you want to grab your brood frames, you need to remove all of the frames, which is a little bit more work to do. However, I think for the hive climate within the hive, it's it can be quite beneficial for the bees, because they really have a very, very easy time to manage their hive climate, because there is not much air flowing through. However, if they need air, they can bring the air in. So it's really, I think it's a good concept, a little bit work intense. So I wouldn't recommend doing it as a, if you're doing it professionally, you spend a

7:38 little bit too much time on your hives, but especially for hobbyists or small mid scale beekeepers, it's a it's really beautiful keeping bees like this. And they're very calm, you because you open them from behind. So there you have the nurse bees and they don't sting. So you can always go there with the t-shirt without getting stung. Oh, I love it. All right. I need to see some pictures of your hives. I want to do something like that here, bring, bring some of that to the states. Anyway, tell me about how big of a problem are Varroa mites over there? I mean, all over Europe, Varroa mites is as well the number one problem. And so many beekeepers fear Varroa or a beekeeper struggle to manage Varroa properly. And we've seen as well over the past 15, 20 years, we've seen a constant increase of the loss rate. So even though we are not as bad yet as North America, as USA and Canada, we still see an increase of mortality of colonies due to the Varroa mites. And this is concerning for many beekeepers around here. And especially what's concerning for most of them is the chemical treatments. This is really something a lot of them don't like to do or as well like or it is more regulated. So for example, amitrestrious is not allowed treatment here. So a lot of beekeepers just rely on formic and oxalic acid. And whoever has applied those chemicals in a hobby environment knows this is nothing for, for, for cool and nature loving beekeeping. This is quite

9:14 the contrary of that. And that's why a lot of beekeepers are as well struggling with managing Varroa mites properly. Yeah, I don't know anybody that actually wants to use chemicals in their beehives. We just often feel like we have to, like we don't have a choice. So I love looking at every kind of natural or chemical free way to do it. So let's jump into that. Let's talk about life hive. Give me the basic concept of how it works. Yeah, sure. So life hive is a Varroa treatment that uses the natural principle of heat. We go to 108 degrees Fahrenheit for three hours, which kills the mites and the bees survive. And this concept is called hyperthermia.

10:00 And it's been known since the 1970s, 1980s, where scientists have found out this heat tolerance difference between the mites and the bees. But what makes life have really special is that we have a heating element in each of the foundation of the brood frames, and we can target each of the frames individually. So instead of heating the whole hive at once, we only heat up one frame at a time for three hours periods. And this is enough to kill the Varroa mites that are in those kept brood cells on the frame, who are right at that moment reproducing. And we kill those reproducing mites while keeping the bees safe. And this is what really what makes life hive very special because through this machine learning algorithms that detect the kept cells on a frame, we can then apply the treatments in a fully automated way so that, you know, even in remote areas, it is solar powered beekeepers can just install life hive on their hives, and then it will keep the mite levels low throughout the whole season. Let me make sure we're not confusing people here, because we started off talking about these Swiss hives that are different for our listeners in North America. They're different than the regular Langstroth hives. But you have developed this for both kinds of bee hives? Yes, I mean, we have had in the past, we've worked on all different types of bee hives because there we were very adaptive. But the product life hive that we are launching now,

11:36 this focuses on standard Langstroth bee hives. So we're using Langstroth deep 10 frames where the product will be featured in. And just to pull out a few things that you already said, because you said a lot in a very small space, you mentioned that this will kill Varroa under the kept cells, correct? Exactly, yes. Capped brood cells. If somebody is using an oxalic acid vaporizer, my understanding is that does not go beneath the cappings, which is why you have to have a cycle of roughly every seven days for three weeks or so to take care of all that brood that may be hatching.

12:19 Am I on the right track here? Yes, you're on the right track. But with what you have, and it's called life hive, but you're not selling in a whole hive system like a box with all the frames. What you have is individual frames with foundation that's heated up from a solar heater to 108 degrees. So that heat is going from actually the inside out instead of the outside in. Does it hurt the brood at all? No, the brood does not get hurt, but I think I'll quickly need to specify here, we actually do sell one brood box as part of the package. Yeah, please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. I'm just trying to clarify all of it. Sure. Yeah, I think that's very good.

13:08 Okay, so you sell a whole box with these frames in it then? Exactly, yeah, because what's very important is we have this connection mechanism that makes sure the current gets delivered to the inside of the foundations. And therefore we have this connection mechanism that makes sure that electricity can flow into the frames and therefore the treatments can actually happen. And that electricity is coming from a solar panel? Exactly, yeah. Where does the solar panel sit? On top to the side? Where is it? Yeah, we leave it actually to the beekeeper where they want to place it. So there are some beekeepers that put the solar panel right on the top of the hives or off the top of the supers actually. Or there are as well some others who would rather have the solar panel next to the hive standing next to it and then put it as well in an angle that you know it catches a little bit more sun. That really depends on where your hives are located, how sunny it is, whether you're under a tree or not. So that really depends on the beekeeper and we keep it very flexible. We have just a cable where you can plug into the box and which will then power the unit. If somebody is listening and goes, holy cow, that sounds really cool. I want to try that. Unfortunately, they can't even buy one of these yet, can they?

14:27 Tell us where you're at in the life cycle. Yeah, exactly. So over the past 10 years, we've put a lot of efforts into making this product, developing it and bringing it to the market. So we have already been on the market in the early years of our company, where we sold it mainly to the European market. We sold 3,500 units, so we were quite successful on a commercial level. Got as well a lot of clients, got as well some feedback. We have clients that are still using these first versions of the product. So with some clients, the versions have been in use now for seven plus years, which is pretty cool as well for us to see that the products have an impact and are really positively influencing the bee's health of these clients. Let me just take a minute here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. Whether you're a season beekeeper or just getting started, Man Lake has the equipment and the expertise that you need to set your bees up for success, including my new favorite woodenware, Man Lake's Wax Dipped Hive Kits. They are absolutely beautiful with a natural finish and they're made to last. In fact, for up to 25 years, no painting necessary. And don't forget your discount code MLBLOV10. It's in the show notes for $10 off your first $100 purchase. Now, back to the guest. But we had as well some challenges which were mainly

16:00 on the mechanical level because it's very hard to make or to build a system that reliably connects while being very user-friendly for the beekeeper in the day-to-day operation. And that's why we've put a lot of development and efforts into developing our mechanics in a way that, first of all, we fit the standard dimensions. So you can throw our frames into standard boxes or you can take standard frames and put them into our boxes. Both ways work. That was one of the big things or as well making sure that we have this connection mechanisms that all of the frames who are in a live hive brood box actually get treated and get the right temperature, which is very, very crucial for our technology to work. So that's where we put a lot of efforts in. And over the past four years, we have as well demonstrated that on larger commercial farms where we really tested whether the usability is on that level that those guys who are cracking a hive in a minute and then closing it again, they can work with it. And now that we've validated that, we're opening back to the obvious beekeepers, to the backyard beekeepers with a validated technology that, yeah, they can use for their own hives. I know I'm jumping all over the place here, Pascal. I apologize for that. You mentioned that you're going to heat up a frame to 108 degrees for three hours. How often does that happen? And how does it know when to heat? Yes, that's a very,

17:31 very good question. It's probably one of my favorites to answer. Because it took brains for you to figure it out. That's why you should feel very proud of yourself on this one. Oh, thank you. I mean, you know, it's I'm coming from a four generation beekeeping family. And we've spent so much time with the bees trying to understand them. And I think we still don't yet understand them, not yet even half the way. So I think, you know, there's a lot more to do. But every every little bit that we can contribute to understanding the bees is is just cool. And if you develop something, yeah, this is this is this is really cool getting something out for the bees. And I think that's where this joy of answering this question is coming from. So coming to the point, we apply an algorithm that can sense when the frame has a majority of kept cells. And we do this by inputting a little, little heat into the frame from time to time, like four times a day.

18:30 And then we sense how quickly the heat dissipates. And with test with this algorithm, we can basically detect the biological pattern of the bee brood. Because when the the egg is in, there is almost no mass right on the bottom of the cells. And then those eggs, they get fat heavily, and they swim in this little protein shake, basically. So there's a lot of mass then. And once they become poop, they move away from the cell and move up. And this biological pattern, we can detect with our algorithms. And therefore, we can then using machine learning algorithms detect, okay, this frame is has a majority of kept brood in it. And this is the right moment for us to treat against the mites.

19:16 It's hard to believe that it isn't going to hurt the brood or the bees at all. Do you have any kind of numbers on how efficient the treatment is, and how safe it is? Yes. So on the efficiency level, it's, especially on the Varroa offsprings, is very, very efficient. We kill, I always say more than 95%. But it's probably closer to 99%. What we kill, I've hardly ever seen any Varroa offspring coming out of a treated cell alive. So on that level, that's that's that's pretty easy. I think on the level, you know, how safe it is for the bees, this is a more or this is the one where we had to put in a little bit more of our resources, because we realized very quickly that depending on various factors, which is queen, colony size, and as well the, you know, whether it's fall or spring, that can have quite an impact on the on the survival rates of the larvae, especially on the eggs and the young larvae. So those those two stages of the bee brood development, they are more sensitive to heat. And that's why we need to be more careful. So besides increasing the efficiency against Varroa mites, our algorithm as well protects the bee colonies for being more secure.

20:35 And that's actually quite interesting. We've released a paper for those listeners who are really interested in, you can find it. It's called Efficiencies and Trade Off of new hyperthermia device. It is linked as well on our website. So those who are really interested in finding out more about that can read the paper and it's published, it's open source. So you know, that's as well one of the findings that was never published before. And when we found that out, that was really interesting for us and was as well driver behind us developing this brood detection algorithm. So it's killing the little baby Varroas. The adult Varroas, it's not going to kill because they're not getting in the cells under the cappings, right? Yes, I mean, they are as well in the in the cap cells, because I mean, there is always a motor mite and sometimes as well.

21:27 Yeah, that's where they lay. Yeah. And sometimes as well, you know, the first or the second daughter mites might as well be already developed because it depends a little bit on the treatment timing. We've seen as well an increased mortality rate of the adult Varroas. However, not yet not at the level of 100%. So this is more at the level of 40%, something like that. And what we have not yet investigated is whether, for example, the fertility of those of those mites might be impacted by heat. This is suspect or this is subject of more research to be ongoing. But for us, it's not really crucial because if we can if we can break the Varroa reproduction cycle, we keep the mind numbers low. So we don't really care about the adult Varroas who survived. We care about the three to four offspring Varroas that cannot escape to sell alive. This is this is where our impact happens. All right, I've got an oddball question for you. Now, my queens are not normal. They don't take a brood frame and just lay across the whole thing, edge to edge, top to bottom in every single frame. But instead, they lay in a whole bunch of it in the middle. And then there might be a little bit of honey up in this corner and a little bit of pollen up in this corner. 108 degrees is going to melt honey. Am I going to have a mess? You see what I mean? Is that going to be a problem at all?

23:00 Yes, I know what you mean. This is not going to be a problem at all. Because normally, the the feeding areas are a little bit more on the outside of the frames and the brood is more in the central part of the area. And we have as well a very normal heat distribution. So in the center of the frames, it's a little bit hotter than on the outside. And 108 degrees Fahrenheit is not critical for food or pollen. Since the honey is only stored for a very short time on the brood frames and afterwards the bees, they put it up into the honey supers, you will not feel any difference in the honey that you produce. Yeah, makes sense. And the wax will not melt. The wax needs 20 degrees Celsius more. I think that's like 12 degrees Fahrenheit or something like that.

23:57 So it won't even get close to melting the wax. Good. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about winter. Now, if somebody lives in a warm climate, I would think that they want this working all year long. If somebody is in a cold climate like you and I, there's a natural brood break going on during the winter. Do I want to not use this box during the winter or do I just keep using it year round, but it's not going to heat up? No, I mean, during wintertime, a treatment does not have any positive effect on the bees. That's why we decided that we can detect when there is wintertime when no brood is present and then we switch off the treatments. And once it's spring again, we'll switch it on again automatically. So as a beekeeper, you don't even have to do that. But the unit is meant to be in the field as well for overwintering. So if you have a hive in the spot where you overwinter, you don't have to transfer the frames out into another box and overwinter, and then in the spring, transfer them back in, you can just leave the hive as is. And the system will switch off the heating for the broodless period overwinter. And then once it's spring and the bees fly out again and start breeding, then we'll switch it on again. When you say we'll switch it on again, does that happen automatically or is that something is a beekeeper? I need to go turn it off and on. No, it happens automatically. I mean, you as a beekeeper, if you want to feel safe, you're going to have a power button. So you can also switch it off and then in springtime,

25:31 switch it on again. This is up to you. But the use case is that we detect it automatically. So it's really like, you know, from our perspective, we're on around 80 hives in our operations. And even though like, this is nothing compared with commercial beekeepers, but taking care of 80 hives and making sure you have been at every apiary and taking care of every hive is a little bit of a challenge. Making sure that your management is fine. That's why we have decided we want to build this system in a way that it's really, it keeps the beekeeper safe and sound about what's happening about the varroa levels in their hives. And therefore we do as well, you know, those little extra things like switching it on or off. This is a very small task for us while I think adding a lot of value to the beekeeper. Oh yeah, that's no big deal. Flipping a switch. Yeah. So as a fourth generation beekeeper, you personally, what's the joy that you find in beekeeping? I think the coolest thing I always love when I go out in spring and hear the bees for the first time again, you know, after that winter break, because it, you know, just this buzzing, this humming of the bees.

26:46 It's just very relaxing. And especially in spring, when you open them first time, they are oftentimes so calm and kind of really looking forward to spring as well, like we humans do as well. So I think, you know, there's a lot of parallels. And I think there is a lot that we can learn. I mean, this super organism, colony, peak summertime, one queen, 50,000 bees, all being organized, communicating, going out for, for harvesting, or for pollinating crops and then bringing back pollen. This is just fascinating, you know, how on that small space, everything is organized and thrives and really explodes. So if you see that, I think, man, that's, that's something we human can learn a lot from the bees. Yeah, it's totally amazing. They continue to amaze me. There's so much to learn. And just when I think I've learned it, then there's 10 times more to learn again. Exactly. Exactly. That's half the fun of it, though. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my father is now, he's now 67. And he's been, he got his first hives at the age of 10. So he's been doing it for 57 years. Wow. And it's just amazing, you know, like, I mean, whenever I'm with him at the hives, he's just, he sees the things that no one else can see is like, you know, going into the, just having a look at the hive entrance and seeing how the bees fly. And then he normally goes around,

28:21 takes a one minute look and then he said, okay, we'll open this, this and that. All the other hives will leave untouched. And the way he sees these things. Yeah, like, this is really amazing for me as well. You know, I love being at the bees, but I think I'm, I'm just not that experienced as he is. And maybe I as well don't have that much patience as he has. And as we all know, patience is important in beekeeping. Whenever you're stressed, it's not a good time to open up a hive, because they come at you and whenever you're relaxed, it's just a different way of working. So yeah, there's so much to learn. And I think one never stops learning with the bees.

29:02 That is so very true. How do you relax when it's time to get into the hives? Oh, well, our question, I mean, I, I try to tell myself, okay, it takes as long as it takes. I as well try to organize, you know, not that I go and I know I have exactly half an hour and then I need to jump off because I have another meeting coming up or whatever. So I try to organize my days a little bit accordingly. But it's not always easy. It happens that we are at the hives and then we get a phone call and we see, okay, there's some something in the company that we need to take care of, but as well the bees and then it happens that, you know, you kind of lose a little bit of that level of relaxation and then yeah, you normally get stung.

29:51 They will teach you. Yes, exactly. The one day that I got stung up, the worst was a day that I did exactly what you're talking about. I was in a big hurry. I was stressed. I've got to take this hive apart, get this treatment on. I've got five minutes. I'm going to do this and oh man, it got me good. Yeah, you don't help the bees and you don't help yourself. I like to walk out to the hives, stop maybe 20 feet away, put my veil on and just breathe and just close my eyes, just breathe for a few seconds or however long it takes until I feel relaxed and then I approach them very slowly and I make sure they can feel my relaxation somehow and it is amazing how much better it works. Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, it's a pretty good exercise. I think maybe next time I have a business meeting coming up next afterwards, I'll do exactly the same as you just said.

30:50 And there's other days where hey, either the bees are in a bad mood or I'm not quite in a right place and I'll get out there and I'll go, no, not today. Turn around and go back and save it for the next day or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and they appreciate that, especially when they're upset for some various reasons because we can't fix all that. All right. No. I want to hear, you've been keeping bees for a long time. Give me some kind of a wild and crazy story that's happened to you in your beekeeping journey. Well, I thought about that and I think the craziest story was actually not happening to me, but it happened to my grandfather. So he was as well a beekeeper pretty much all his life. And at some point he was out at the apiaries and it was a hot summer day and he got a little thirsty. So he drank a lot. And then at some point he was like, okay, after I drank, I'll probably need to go and pee. And actually a bee thought, well, let's follow him. And then she actually, or he actually got stunned right in the middle there. And yeah, this, it happily, it never happened to me, but I think this must be quite painful if that happens to you. So yeah, this is my crazy beekeeping story. And probably uncomfortable for a few days, I imagine.

32:11 Yeah. I mean, I didn't ever speak with my grandmother, but it could as well be that she liked it, you know, I was trying not to go down that path. All right, Pascal, appreciate you very much. Next time you're over here in the States, come see me. We'll go do a little skiing. Absolutely. Looking forward to that. Thanks a lot, Eric. It was a pleasure for being on the show. Hey, one thing before I let you go, Pascal, if people want to find out a little bit more about Lifehive, where do they find it? All right. That's a very good question. So people who are interested and want to learn more can visit get.lifehive.io and our Kickstarter campaign will launch in April 2025. So yeah, we're really looking forward to increase our community and welcome you to become a Lifehive member.

33:03 Thanks again for joining us here on Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. Another great place for more information on everything related to this podcast is in our email newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at belovebekeeping.com. And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love. See you next week.