#1908 - Erika Thompson

Erika Thompson (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

Well, thank you very much for allowing me to be the host of you for the first podcast.

Erika Thompson (0:21)

Thank you so much for having me and The Bees.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

My pleasure. I became fascinated with Bees when we did an episode of Fear Factor, where we had to cover these people in bees. And it was this outdoor thing that we did at this ranch.

And while we were doing it, a local hive of bees came over and interacted with our bees. And we had to shut down production.

And so I talked to the beekeeper. I said, what's going on? And he said, we have to shut everything down for an hour or so while they work this out.

Erika Thompson (0:52)

While the bees work it out?

Joe Rogan (0:54)

Yeah. I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, they're going to communicate, because these bees are trying to figure out why these bees are here, why our bees are there.

And I go, they're going to communicate? Like, is it going to be a bee war? He's like, no, they're going to sort it out. And I'm like, how do they sort it out?

And it's kind of unknown, right? Like how?

Erika Thompson (1:11)

Sure. Well, what happened with those bees?

Joe Rogan (1:13)

They sorted it out, and the other bees went away, and our bees came back and stayed, and then we resumed the show.

Erika Thompson (1:21)

That's great.

Joe Rogan (1:22)

So what kind of communication are bees capable of? What do we know?

Erika Thompson (1:27)

We don't know everything there is to know about bees. Bees have been around for 120 million years. We've been keeping bees for maybe 10,000. If I were to think I knew more than the bees, that would be so foolish of me. But we do know some of the ways that bees communicate.

They communicate through scents, through pheromones a lot, through these chemical signals that they're sending out to the entire colony to let this colony, that's a superorganism, know what's going on.

And so in your case, you had one colony of bees. A colony is the collective noun for a group of bees, whereas a hive is the box they live in. So you had these two colonies who met and were trying to make sure they all stayed together and they all stayed with their queen and went to the right place. And it sounds like you had a bunch of bees in one area, and bees are social creatures, so they were attracted to the scents of these other bees and were there to see what's going on. And they eventually figured it out and everybody went back to their respective places, and it was fine.

Joe Rogan (2:33)

So what is happening, though, when they're figuring it out and they're smelling that the... Is it that these other bees have a specifically different pheromone?

Erika Thompson (2:42)

Yes, they will have a different scent, and that's how they'll stay with their colony. And it comes from the queen. The queen has a queen mandibular pheromone, and so she is sending out scent signals, pheromones, to the colony.

And they're always communicating with each other. And the queen and the worker bees have this wonderful system of checks and balances to make sure that everything gets done within the hive and that the colony is doing what it needs to.

Joe Rogan (3:07)

Is it possible that bees who are like loner bees could integrate with another hive?

Erika Thompson (3:13)

Absolutely. You know, it happens to me in my work all the time. I remove bees from places and, you know, I'll go in and take a colony and a hive out and relocate it to my apiary. And in that process, I don't always get every bee, of course. And the bees that are left behind, or if there's a loner bee, they can join another colony.

And it's actually, their chances of successfully joining are increased if they bring gifts of pollen or honey, so.

Joe Rogan (3:43)

Whoa, wow.

Erika Thompson (3:45)

But, you know, bees live a very short lifespan, so sometimes they'll just live out the rest of their bee life. And the bees that we see out in the world foraging, they're at the end of their short bee life.

Joe Rogan (3:59)

How long is a bee's life?

Erika Thompson (4:00)

So, a worker bee, and we're talking about honey bees, western honey bees, the ones you see me keep.

The lifespan of a female worker bee varies throughout the year. So, in the spring and summer, when the bees are working their hardest, the female worker bees will only live about six weeks. In the winter, when they're not doing quite as much, and when we need more bees to make it through the winter, they'll live a little bit longer, and they'll live about six months, and their bodies actually change in the winter. The bees that are born later in the year and need to make it through the winter will have more fat bodies on them so that they can make it through the dearth when there's nothing in bloom and when bees are living off the honey that they collected or stored in their hive earlier in the year.