The Bee Whisperer: Inspiration from a Honey Bee Advocate - A Conversation with Aidan Wing

SolPods Amy Farrell sits down with Aidan Wing, founder of Wings of Nature Bees, a regenerative apiculture company focused on natural practices and approaches to beekeeping and honey production.  Aidan describes how bees called him to beekeeping and inspired him to launch his own business.  Learn about the amazing community of the hive, the benefits of bees and honey, and what you can do to help protect bees.

Check out Wings of Nature Bees' website:  https://www.wingsofnaturebees.com/
Follow Wings of Nature Bees on Instagram: @wingsofnaturebees
Learn more about the Master Beekeeper Program: https://thebeeconservancy.org/

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Transcript

Lucy Intro 00:03

Welcome to SolPods Studio. We're not your average social network. We're a community of professionals, enthusiasts, and students taking sustainability to the next level. Join us on our journey and get inspired by Earth Heroes just like you.

Amy 00:19

Hello and welcome back to SolPods Studio. I'm Amy Farrell based in the Bay Area of California, and today I'm so excited. I have a fellow Bay Area resident with me, Aidan Wing of Wings of Nature.  Welcome, Aidan!

Aidan 00:34

Thank you so much, Amy.
 
Amy 00:36 

So glad to have you.  So this is a little bit of a last minute podcast interview. Aidan was over here checking out my beehive. He manages my beehive, and we've been talking about doing a podcast. So we just said there's no time like the present. Let's do it today. So, Aidan, let's just kick it right off with, you know, tell me a little bit about yourself, how you got into beekeeping, and how you learned the trade.

Aidan 01:04

Well, you know, they say that the bees often choose their keepers, and a lot of beekeepers like to kind of say that. And for me, it was total coincidence of how I got into bees. About 15 years ago, I walked outside my cabin door and my neighbor was walking by with this man. She introduced me to him and said he was a beekeeper and wanted to put bees on our property.

It really piqued my interest. I really knew nothing about bees at all back then, but I was kind of a gardener. Do-it-yourselfer.  And so I was curious, and after talking to this man for a little bit, he told me that he just moved to the area and had a beekeeping company and asked me if he could hire me for just a couple days of labor. So I said, yeah, sure.  But I kind of saw it as an anomaly and just thought, you know, this will be interesting to check out. And I went to work for him just for a few days and that was it. I was hooked! He offered me more and more work, and slowly, I stopped doing the other work I was doing and became a full time beekeeper.

Amy 02:11

Wow. So in a way, it was almost like an apprentice situation, right? You were working kind of under him for a while and learned from him.

Aidan 02:18

So really working for him, one of the most fantastic parts was that I learned from him, I learned from all the other beekeepers that we did business with or collaborated with, but most importantly, it just gave me a lot of time with bees. And so, you know, people who are keeping bees, a hive or two in their backyards are seeing those on, you know, every few weeks or every month, but working full time as a beekeeper, I was looking through hundreds of hives, consistently.  So, just the exposure to the amount of hive time, looking inside the beehive really, you know, is what taught me so much about bees.  A lot of time to observe them and work with them.

Amy 03:12

It's so incredible, like just in the short time that I've had bees.  You've been, you know, helping me with my hive. I guess I've come to learn that it's a real community, the hive. Right? And, you know, can you kind of share with us, I guess the inner working of the hive?  That hierarchy, if you will, of the hive?  What are the bees' roles? And what did they do?

Aidan 03:38

Yeah.  Absolutely.  So, first of all, it's really fantastic to kind of watch bees and learn about bees because you realize that the hive really works as a super organism. And there's a means in the hive where there's feedback loops where the bees can really communicate all kinds of environmental changes and changes in the behavior very, very quickly. 

In the hive there's three casts of bees, and they each have their different role. First and foremost, it's, we have the queen bee.  And though we call her the queen, she's really not the ruler of the hive. She really is, really her role, I would say, would be the mother of the hive. Her role is to lay eggs, and she lays up to 2000 eggs a day. So she can really make a lot of bees and a lot of babies. And then there's the worker bees. The majority of the hive.  The hive can have 60,000 individuals. The majority of them will be worker bees. Worker bees are infertile female bees, and they're capable of all the inner workings of the hive as far as building the beeswax comb, feeding the young, and caring for the young, caring for the queen, defending the hive, foraging for honey or for pollen. So they really do all the work in the hive. Hence, they're the worker bees. And then we have the drones which are the only male bees in the hive. And really their only job is to mate with new queen bees. And they kind of have a very laid back life, but they're very seasonal. They start raising them in the early spring when they're ready to make new hives and make new queens. And as soon as fall comes around, the drones are kind of sent out the door and they stop raising them.

Amy 05:47

Gotcha. And I guess maybe you can explain too, because I know you said that queen bee is laying so many eggs. What's the life span of these bees?

Aidan 06:01

Yeah. So, a worker bee. It's interesting. A worker bee can, in the summer and in the busy season, will typically only live about six weeks.  And they come out of the hive and, or they come out of their cells when they're first born, and they immediately start cleaning up after theirselves. And one of their first jobs when they're really young is feeding the other larva.  They have a special gland in their head called the hypopharyngeal gland. And it's really prominent when they're at a young age ,and they can consume, honey and pollen and make a food through that gland that they then feed to the young bees. But as they grow, they kind of go through the different jobs of the hive, and as they become older, they all become foragers and go out into the field, foraging for honey or for pollen. And once they're doing that, they're kind of using so much energy and going so fast that they literally kind of ride it 'til the wings fall off.  And they just go and go and go 'til about six weeks of age. But there's a constant replenishment of bees because that queen's laying, you know, 2000 eggs a day and replacing the older bees, consistently.

But something interesting happens when summer turns to fall, it starts to get cold, and flowers stop blooming.  Those same worker bees who only live about six weeks then metabolize the pollen that they've been feeding to the young and store certain proteins in their fat bodies which enable them to live about six months. So they kind of shut their metabolism down.

Amy 07:43

Almost, almost hibernating. 

Aidan 07:46

Almost hibernating.  Yeah, we call it clustering. They shut their metabolism down. They cluster into a big ball to stay warm through the winter months. And those bees on their fat bodies, with all that proteins and stuff, can live for about six months.

Amy 08:03

That's incredible. Well, you know, just thinking about the vulnerability, right, of bees. I mean, six weeks for those bees is a pretty short amount of time. And I guess, I know bees are so important for biodiversity, even for our own health in terms of access to the honey. But maybe you can touch on that. But then also highlight, you know, what are the risks to bees and into the hive?

Aidan 08:34

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, bees played such an important role. First of all, just in the environment, because they're one of the.  First of all, there's about 20,000 species of bees on the planet, and they're nature's number one pollinator And if we really think about what pollination is.  You know, it's the bees means to bring pollen from the male flower of one species to the female flower of that same species and thus create a fruit and/or a seed that can grow the next generation of that plant. So, pollination is just a critical, critical part of ecology. But it's such an important part of our human ecology too because so many of the crops that we grow depend on pollination, you know, to bear fruit or to bear seed. So when we think about what our bee pollinated crops immediately, most of us just think about the fruits like apples and cucumbers and, you know, pumpkins and cherries. But what we don't think about is the crops that are like lettuce or radishes or onions because we don't think of them as bee pollinated flowers because they don't really make a fruit.  You know.  And they don't need to flower to harvest lettuce or to harvest an onion or a radish. But to get the seed from that onion or radish or lettuce for next year's crop, it does need to flower and produce a seed that needs to be bee pollinated. So that is kind of the critical link that bees play both in ecology and in our human ecology too.

Amy 10:32

Yeah, just that biodiversity. I mean, without them, we wouldn't have all these different fruits and vegetables.  And what about, I guess, just our own health. I know you recommended. You've collected amazing honey from our hives, and I've heard that if, you know, you have some sensitivity to plants, allergies that it can help.

Aidan 10:52

Absolutely, honey has, you know, so many people see honey as just a sweetener or as a food, but honey has actually an incredible amount of medicinal values. It is in anti allergen and people really swear by it because honey contains the same pollens that people are allergic to in the springtime. And so by taking a small amount of honey every day, people who have suffered for allergies from years can really mitigate those allergies they're feeling.

Honey is an amazing external medicine too.

Amy 11:35

Oh, I have heard you can put it on a scratch.

Aidan 11:35

Yeah, scratches. and burns is a big thing for honey. Honey is really amazing that when it honey touches our skin, it turns on something in the honey where honey starts to create hydrogen peroxide. And this is really fantastic because it only turns that on when it's in contact with our skin.

And when it does that, it sends a low dose of hydrogen peroxide to our wound or a burn. So if you if you were to put on hydrogen peroxide, it kind of burns real fast. Has its anti-microbial effect and then dissipates. But honey has a kind of continuous low dose of hydrogen peroxide that will send to your wound. It can really, really clear up a wound or a burn really quick. And not only that, honey is incredibly antimicrobial, meaning that it's, you know, anti-fungal, antibacterial. And so honey will allow a burn or a wound to breathe because of its, you know, porous nature, but it will keep any bacteria from entering into that wound. So it's, it's pretty fantastic. And there's been a lot, this has been, you know, practiced for tens of thousands of years, but there's a lot of western medicine being studied in a much greater capacity nowadays about about honey for wounds and burns.

Amy 13:03

No, I know I've seen, you know, just in the drug store.  You'll see like different types of honey ointments.  So , Aidan, you have talked about , you know, clearly the benefits of bees to biodiversity, to our own health. But I'm still concerned about these vulnerabilities. I mean, we've seen in the media you know, the harmful effects of pesticides, right, for example.  Or even mass agriculture where we have one crop for, you know, hectares and hectares.  So, you know, maybe you can talk to what the risks are to the hive, their vulnerability, and then bring it down to what we as individuals can do to help the bees.

Aidan 13:47

So it's kind of no secret that bees are struggling worldwide, and most people are quite aware of that now.  It seems to me that the media always wants to try and find one thing to pinpoint as the cause and effect of what is harming bees. But the truth of the matter that is that there's a multitude of things affecting bees, and it's the entropy of those things together that are having such harmful effects on bee health. And like you mentioned, a lot of those are pesticides, you know, poisons, nutritional deficiencies caused by industrial agriculture, by urban sprawl, by climate change, as well as parasitic mites, diseases, and viruses that are affecting bees.

Our human relationship with bees goes back tens and tens of thousands of years. Even before us, humans were beekeepers, we were dependent on honey as an important part of our ancestral diet. So we, we were honey hunters, meaning we'd find beehives and harvest their honey. And when you say the word hunter, it kind of gives, gives the image of finding something killing it. But when we were hunting hunters, we weren't killing the bees. We had a relationship with the bees. And if you look at a lot of ancient cultures, they have a, there's so much reverence for bees worldwide. And then about 10,000 years ago, we started actually keeping bees in hives. And so, so kind of our relationship with bees goes back tens and tens of thousands of years. And honey bees are very environmentally sensitive. Therefore, when we started to see health issues in the bees, it's really a clear message to humans that environmentally, things are off, you know.  That things are not going as smoothly as nature intended them to be. And so I think bees are really a powerful tool to humans to really look at our environment and look at the changes that we're making that are having the effect of, you know, health effects on honeybees. If, if our honeybees are in trouble, we're the ones that are really in trouble.

Amy 16:21

Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, and it's so inspirational that you took this on as a full time career, and it's probably a good time to ask you a little bit about Wings of Nature.  The fact that you help people keep bees in their own backyard, and I'm sure, there's a lot of resources for people who live outside the Bay Area or in other parts of the world. You know, for someone who's interested in protecting bees in that way, I've even seen, you know, in some cities they have, you know, bees on the tops of, of apartment buildings and other buildings.  Maybe talk about, you know, why you started Wings of Nature and then how can we find, you know, people like you in other communities?

Aidan 17:04

Yeah, absolutely. I started Wings of Nature after working for the beekeeper I worked for.  I just had a different way that I wanted to do things.  Kind of a more environmentally minded business, and,I really wanted to focus more on, raising queens.  Queen breeding to me is, is also big part of a, of a kind of environmental solution for bee health of finding bees that are really resilient and such and so forth.  And so, I've expanded to raise honey. I raise queens, and I sell beehives to a lot of hobby beekeepers, as well as I help people maintain their hives like I do in your backyard.

Amy 17:50

Yeah, it's fantastic. My two hives have just done so well.  It's been so great when you collect the honey knowing it's coming right from our own backyard.

Aidan 18:00

Yeah. Absolutely. So, there's a lot of resources all over, all over the country and all over the world.  Some of the best resources is that almost every city has a beekeeping club, you know.

Amy 18:13

Or like a guild?

Aidan 18:15

Yeah. And we have one right here in San Mateo County called the San Mateo County Be Guild. And a lot of people who are wanting to learn about beekeeping will go to these meetings, and they'll have great speakers and you know, other people who are at the same level and trying to get in.  You know, opportunities for mentorship or ways to connect with people like me who do it for people who don't want to actually, you know, get sticky and get stung.

Amy 18:48

So, yeah, so far I've not been stung. I talked to a neighbor who also has bees, and he said in 20 years he's been stung once. So, I guess the idea of, bees hurting you, it's not, it's not a thing. Right? I mean, bees pretty much do their business.

Aidan 19:05

They're not very gentle creatures. They are definitely capable of inflicting some pain.

Amy 19:13

Of course.  And I mean, maybe that's a good time for you to describe, you know, you know, bees so well.  You worked with so many hives. I know once we were out by my hive and you said, oh, the hum of their wings. I guess that noise was changing, and I guess, maybe explain what that means.

Aidan 19:33

Yeah. Yeah. So, as a beekeeper observation is really your best tool to learn about bees. And, I think one of the reasons why so many people take up beekeeping as a hobby, or as a profession, is that being around bees is a very calming kind of, experience.  When you're working bees. You know, when I'm driving, driving around in between hives, you know, I'm thinking about business, and I'm thinking about kids and I'm thinking about life, and I'm thinking about the oil change, but as soon as I open a hive I'm completely.  All that stuff has gone away, and it's just me and that hive. So you really order to use observation as a great tool. So, from the things that you see from, from things you smell and from things you hear, really can tell you a lot.  And so after years and years, and hives and hives of practicing this observation, you can tell a little subtle differences. For instance, maybe you're in a hive and you hear, hear the buzz, and it's very, you know, gentle and kind of meditative and then something changes in pitch, and you can tell that they've become a little irritated. And so if you, you can pick up that small kind of stuff, then you say, all right. Well, let's just put the hive back together and close it up and be done. You know, if you can't observe that then, you know, you might get yourself in situations where you disturb the hive a little more.

Amy 21:14

No, it's, I mean, from my perspective, the mindfulness or the connection to nature is just observing more flowers.  And so, you know, I think it's, it is about stopping and slowing down and, yeah, completely.  And I'd like to get more involved with the San Mateo County Bee Guild because it's another way to get connected with your community. I guess honey is a great benefit from having the hive. So how often do you collect honey?

Aidan 21:47

So as with most things with bees, the best answer is, well, that depends.  But generally you know, two or three times a season, sorry, two or three times a year. Typically they're making here in the Bay Area with our kind of Mediterranean climate. We have a winter but it's relatively mild and then the flowers start pretty early like February, March, but it can still be pretty temperament and cold. So usually by April and May, we have our biggest honey flows, but that honey kind of sits on the hive for a while. And then, so we'll usually do a harvest by June and then maybe another one in August and sometimes even one in September just to wrap things up. So two or three times a year depending on, on things.

But there's different ways to go about it too.  You can go and try and do pull, pull entire boxes of honey off at a single time and kind of try and do a bigger thing or so people who have hives in their backyard because sometimes we'll just pull a single frame of honey, you know, maybe a couple pounds of honey and harvest and process that honey. And then they're like, oh, we need some more honey.

Amy 23:06

Yeah, just use it as you need it.  Share it with your neighbors. 

Aidan 23:10

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Amy 23:12

Now, are there different grades of honey, or are there ratings?

Aidan 23:17

Absolutely. Absolutely. The US definitely has a grading system for honey, and I'm not quite sure actually how that works, but I would say, some of the things that you'll see, for instance, on, labeling of honey is, you'll see raw honey as part of the label. And what that means is has honey has enzymes in, in it and enzymes are living proteins. So if you take honey and you heat it over 120 degrees, it kills those enzymes. Now, those enzymes are an important part of the health benefits of honey. So for large scale commercial honey, sometimes they heat it to pasteurize it or to make it much easier. Honey is very viscous, especially at cold temperatures. So when you heat it up, it becomes much more liquid, much easier to put through a filter and much easier to bottle or pipe to different tanks and such and so forth.

So commercially they heat honey really, really high, which takes out the enzymes, which is part of the really good health giving benefit to honey. So if you see raw on a label, that means that it is raw and it has those enzymes. When you see the word unfiltered on labels, it is because same thing with it doesn't mean it hasn't gone through some kind of screen.   Because honey, when you, when you process it, it has chunks of comb in it.  It might have a dead bee in it or something.  So it does go through some kind of screening.  However, it doesn't go through an ultra fine filter that might take out things like pollen, which also have, you know, the added health benefits to it too. I would say one thing that for U.S. beekeepers that kind of bothers us in labeling is that the USDA doesn't have any definition of organic honey.  And part of the complication around that definition is that bees can fly for five miles. So if you take a five mile radius around a hive, it's quite a lot of acreage. So that's a lot of acreage to, you know, the beekeeper can use organic practices, they can have it on an organic farm or in a wild land area. But if five miles down the road, you don't really know what your neighbors are doing, it's hard to define it as organic. And so the USDA won't give us any labeling that sets beekeepers that use organic practices and keep them in our, you know, organic farms or wild areas any different than people who, you know, throw in chemicals in the hive and antibiotics and keep them in, you know, where areas where there's heavy agricultural chemical use. And so when you go to the store and you see organic honey. people automatically think, oh, this honey might be better but almost none of it is actual domestic U.S. local honey. It's, it's always from, it's always imported from Brazil or Vietnam or something like that.

Amy 26:28

That's really, that's really important to know because the practices you mentioned, you know, using antibiotics in the hive and other chemicals that we should be able to find that information out when we're looking for honey. So, I guess that's something for us all to keep our eyes out for. and, and on that, are there any beekeeping certifications or classes as a beekeeper that you would get beyond just attending, you know, a guild workshop?

Aidan 26:56

Yeah, for sure. For sure. There's probably, the biggest one in the US is called the Master Beekeepers Program. And that's a pretty intensive program that I think has different levels to it that anyone can access those through.  It's through universities typically. But anyone has, you don't need to be enrolled in university to take the class.  And it's a really deep dive into the practicalities of beekeeping with the certification attached to it, and so that's a nice, that's a nice program. Other than that there's lots of, you know, local classes and all over the US, you know.

Amy 27:39

Yeah. Sure. I mean, I think globally you have access to, you know, resources to learn about bees.  Beyond, you know, beekeeping specifically, I know. actually through you, I've met someone who has different honey tasting options and it's, it's kind of cool if you have an event to have different types of honey and do kind of a honey tasting.  And then all sorts of products related to honey and pollen as well.  Well, this has been so interesting. I guess we always end the podcast with a kind of funny question. So put on your creative hat for a moment. So if you had a sustainability superpower, what would that be?

Aidan 26:23

Ok. That's good. That's real good. Yeah, I think it would be, you know.  I think it would be to educate people about the things that have an ill effect on the health of bees, and educate people on the positive, the positive motions we can take to help protect bees.

Amy 28:52

I love it.  I love it.

Aidan 28:55

And I think in a nutshell, you know, plant more flowers.  You know,  plant a garden.  Have flowers available for bees, even a vegetable garden. Let let some of those vegetables and herbs, flower.  Support regenerative agriculture because this industrial agriculture model is not sustainable for the planet. And a small scale regenerative agriculture is really to me the only thing that makes sense that's gonna support bees and thus support all life.

Amy 29:23

Agreed. Agreed.

Aidan 29:24

By local honey from, directly from beekeepers. You know.

Amy 29:28

I love it. It's, it's a bee advocate, I guess. That's fantastic. Well, hopefully this podcast will help you achieve those goals as a bee advocate. It's your sustainability superpower. I know we've loved having you on the podcast. Thank you so much.

Aidan 29:42

I really appreciate it.

Amy 29:45

All right. Thanks.

Aidan 29:45

Have a great day.

Amy 29:46

You too.

Lucy Outro 29:50

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