1314: Bees | Skeptical Sunday

9:44Jessica Wynn:I see, right.

9:44Jordan Harbinger:So before that, if you wanted honey, you basically smashed those baskets and destroyed the hive, and you had to start all over. So his design was the wooden box with removable frames, and it meant you could move entire colonies around without killing them. And once hives became modular boxes, you could stack them, load them onto trucks, ship entire colonies across the country. So we're talking billions of bees shipped every year for pollination because of Langstroth.

10:16Jessica Wynn:Right, yeah. We used to have bees here, like I said, my wife. And I had a bee suit and stuff because I'd go out and help. And you'd open it up. Yeah, I know. Yeah, hot too, literally. You'd open up the hive and they would, you have to open it up like every week or so or every few days, I can't remember. And the reason is because those frames, they don't just like neatly and nicely build inside the frame. They do, but then they're trying to glue the frame to the side, and they're trying to glue the frames together, or maybe something drips or falls, and then they cement that up. So you have to scrape all that off and sort of maintain it.

10:47Jessica Wynn:And then you take all that wax, and you can just chew it. It's delicious. It is. And you take the propolis or whatever that other stuff is, and you can, I don't know, there's a million things you can do with bee products. It's like, you can use everything. So, all right, so honeybees, what makes them so special physically besides the fact that they somehow convinced humans to eat their vomit and call it a delicacy?

11:07Jordan Harbinger:I mean, I guess you're not entirely wrong there, but it's not exactly barf.

11:12Jessica Wynn:Right.

11:12Jordan Harbinger:Honey never hits their actual digestive stomach. So they've got a separate little storage pouch, basically a honey tummy just for nectar.

11:22Jessica Wynn:Okay, so not puke, more like a lunchbox.

11:25Jordan Harbinger:Right. They collect nectar, stash it in their extra stomach, fly it home and pass it to other bees. Then enzymes and evaporation turn it into honey. It's food processing, not vomiting.

11:39Jessica Wynn:Yeah, that is slightly less disgusting. I mean, it's still a little odd, I suppose. I don't know. We're just thinking about food too much because you're doing that agriculture stuff. But they do really have a, I don't know. Bees are quite amazing. Jen would never kind of get over that when she was a beekeeper. It was like her favorite thing ever.

11:55Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, they're incredible. And they have this incredible anatomy. So for starters, they have five eyes.

12:02Jessica Wynn:Five eyes. I guess I knew they had fly-like traits, but when I imagine a bee, I just see two big black eyes in my head.

12:08Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, most of us do, but they have five. There's two large compound eyes on the sides of their heads, but they're made up of thousands of tiny lenses. Plus, they have three smaller, simple eyes on top. They detect light levels and help them navigate.

12:26Jessica Wynn:I see. So they have sensors as well as eyes. That's crazy. So, yeah, I guess you don't want glasses as a bee. You're in trouble.

12:33Jordan Harbinger:I mean, there might be a cool design there, but with those eyes, they can't see the color red, which is interesting. So red looks black to them, which is why beekeepers would never paint hives red.

12:46Jessica Wynn:So to a bee, a beautiful red rose is just another black flower.

12:49Jordan Harbinger:Yeah.

12:50Jessica Wynn:So goth somehow.

12:51Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, they're gothy. But here's where it gets cool. So they can see ultraviolet light, which creates patterns on flowers that are completely invisible to humans. So a lot of flowers have these UV like landing strips that guide bees directly to the nectar. They're like runway lights at an airport.

13:12Jessica Wynn:So flowers are nature's invisible bee airports. That's cool. Yes, yeah.

13:16Jordan Harbinger:And there's even a color called bees purple, which is a combination of yellow and ultraviolet light that only bees can see. It just doesn't exist for humans. So some beekeepers paint their many hives the same color, but draw a unique symbol on each hive with an ultraviolet pen so bees can differentiate the hives.

13:38Jessica Wynn:So bees have access to exclusive colors that I'll never experience in my lifetime. Right.

13:44Jordan Harbinger:And bees have three types of photoreceptors giving them this trichromatic vision. So it's similar to humans, but we see in red, green, and blue. Bees see in ultraviolet, blue, and green from their compound eyes. So they just can't process red. It's crazy.

14:02Jessica Wynn:That is crazy. I can't imagine life without the color red. I guess they probably think the same about whatever purple UV colors they're seeing. Right. That is cool. It's kind of jealous they can see colors that I can't. That must be kind of interesting.

14:15Jordan Harbinger:I know. Well, don't be jealous. You have opposable thumbs. That is true.

14:18Jessica Wynn:That is true. And a lifespan of more than, I don't know, 48 hours or whatever some of these things have. So how does the honey transferring work? Is this the dance I've read where bees communicate via dance or is that a weird myth?

14:30Jordan Harbinger:No, the dance is very real, and it's also very complicated. It's so sophisticated that an Austrian scientist named Karl von Frisch, he won the Nobel Prize in 1973 just for figuring out what it meant.

14:45Jessica Wynn:Somebody won a Nobel Prize for learning the bee dance? I guess that makes sense.

14:49Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, because it revolutionized our understanding of insect intelligence and communication. He proved bees use a symbolic language.

14:57Jessica Wynn:Okay, but who's dancing? The queen bee is dancing or who's dancing?

15:01Jordan Harbinger:No, no, it's the workers.

15:02Jessica Wynn:Oh, okay.

15:03Jordan Harbinger:And worker bees are all female. So basically every bee you see doing active labor is a girl. The males mostly just hang around waiting to mate and then immediately die. Zero choreography for them.

15:17Jessica Wynn:Nice, so it's a girl boss situation.

15:19Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, full matriarchy. When a forager bee finds a really good nectar source, she flies back to the hive and performs a very specific dance for other foragers.

15:30Jessica Wynn:So she literally dances.

15:32Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, it's incredible and weirdly precise. So she waggles back and forth while moving in a straight line, then circles around to repeat the pattern. The length of the waggle run tells the other bees how far away the food source is. the angle of the dance tells them which direction to fly relative to the sun.

15:54Jessica Wynn:That's crazy. So bees are doing trigonometry through interpretive dance and they understand each other.

16:00Jordan Harbinger:That's nuts. It's like GPS, but also kind of like bee Broadway.

16:05Jessica Wynn:Yeah. I mean, think about it. You miss a turn on Google Maps. Meanwhile, bees are over here communicating pretty precise GPS coordinates through choreography, literally. It's amazing.

16:14Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. And they've had millions of years to perfect it. So there's a documentary that takes a bee out of the hive to somewhere new and tracks it finding its way back to the hive. So it's this cool navigation experiment showing how in tune bees are with where they need to go. Yeah.

16:33Jessica Wynn:And we've had social media for 15 years and somehow we've made communication worse over time.

16:37Jordan Harbinger:I know. I know. You'll also love this. In 2023, it was discovered that the waggle dance is learned. It's not purely instinctual. So it's culturally passed from bee to bee.

16:49Jessica Wynn:So there's bee dance school, which is probably more fun than hauling nectar and pollen. But then again, I guess that's the job.

16:57Jordan Harbinger:Right. Young bees learn the waggle dance from older mentor bees. And each bee develops their own individual dance style. It's like their dialect. And scientists published this in Science Magazine. So it's like a huge deal.

17:13Jessica Wynn:Bees have dialects. Wow. That's I mean, this is amazing.

17:16Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, in a way they do. Bee cultures are shaped by local environments. So some colonies, they're better at dancing than others because they had better teachers.

17:26Jessica Wynn:Wow. And I wonder if that allows them to find food more easily. I don't know. So this is blowing my mind. So if an old bee is a bad teacher, the young bees just learn the dance wrong and maybe it's a little bit less accurate.

17:38Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. And the scary part is that some of the pesticides being used, they harm bee cognition and could disrupt their ability to learn the dance properly. So we might be literally scrambling their cultural transmission.

17:52Jessica Wynn:Ooh, that's yikes. That's worse than I thought. You're not just killing a few bees, you're making it so they can't find food and screwing up generational knowledge or something like that.

18:01Jordan Harbinger:And it gets weirder. Scientists are now building robots that can infiltrate hives and perform the waggle dance to command real bees. So they're trying to teach robots these local bee dialects so they can waggle dance and direct real bees to specific locations because instead of not using pesticides.

18:22Jessica Wynn:Yeah, right. We can stop using these chemicals that kill them. No, no, no. We're going to build, get me, hear me out. We're going to build tiny bee robots that just do the dance so that when we kill the dance teachers, we can replace them. I'm for it. With something mechanical. Yeah. But wait, why do they want to direct bees to specific locations again with robots?

18:41Jordan Harbinger:So first of all, they kind of look like these tiny pencil sharpeners with wings.

18:46Jessica Wynn:The robo bees.

18:47Jordan Harbinger:The robo bees. And they were developed at Harvard. They're basically insect-sized flying robots that have artificial muscles that flap their wings about 120 times a second.

18:59Jessica Wynn:Wow.

18:59Jordan Harbinger:They can hover and steer and make simple decisions with onboard sensors. And they're one of the smallest flying robots. And they're just really detailed. So they're used for artificial pollination, search and rescue, and environmental monitoring.

19:16Jessica Wynn:Yeah, I kind of want one. How do they use these in search and rescue? What's a bee robot going to do if someone's trapped in a well?

19:22Jordan Harbinger:Well, they're not lifting anybody out like a tiny EMT. Think more like a flying GoPro.

19:30Jessica Wynn:I see.

19:30Jordan Harbinger:So they can slip through cracks and collapsed buildings. You know, think what's needed after like a big earthquake. They can map these tight spaces, detect heat or carbon dioxide from breathing, maybe find survivors where humans or drones can't fit.

19:46Jessica Wynn:OK, so they're not rescuing you. They're judging you and reporting your location.

19:50Jordan Harbinger:Right. And they send messages like, human located, still in well, seems dramatic.

19:56Jessica Wynn:Yeah, needs to calm down. Yeah, okay, that makes way more sense.

19:59Jordan Harbinger:Right. Now, they're mostly prototypes. There have been greenhouse pollination experiments, environmental monitoring, that kind of thing. But the idea is swarms of robot bees that will go places nothing else can. But it'll cost you if you really do want one. The ones used for greenhouses run about$10 ,000 each.

20:21Jessica Wynn:Wow. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Is it a good idea to build robots that can speak bee and command them? Because this is sort of like Planet of the Apes slash Black Mirror. I know.

20:30Jordan Harbinger:I mean, I don't think the bees are planning an uprising, but...

20:33Jessica Wynn:Yet.

20:34Jordan Harbinger:Yet. But be nice to them in case, I guess. Because bees can recognize human faces. What? Yeah. They use the same configural processing that humans use. recognizing the spatial relationship between facial features. They can distinguish between different people and remember them.

20:55Jessica Wynn:Man, so if you've ever been stung by a bee, maybe you didn't do anything. He just thought you were ugly. Right, right. Exactly. So if I swatted a bee, it might remember my face and potentially hold a grudge?

21:09Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, it might. And it might communicate that to other bees.

21:12Jessica Wynn:Cool. So yeah, you're on like the sting list. Right. Somebody goes back into the waggle dance and is like, get that guy with the crappy fascist haircut. Go sting that guy.

21:22Jordan Harbinger:I mean, I think we're all probably on that list, but that's actually why beekeepers use smoke. So it scrambles their alarm pheromones so the hive can't smell, you know, intruders. Otherwise, every time you open the hive, they remember you and they'll get progressively more aggressive. But it's thought, though, over time that this stresses the bees out, too.

21:46Jessica Wynn:Not using smoke or using smoke? Using smoke. If you think your workplace is toxic, just remember, bees literally murder underperforming leadership. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Revolve. You know when something sneaks onto your calendar, a wedding, work thing, vacation, even just a dinner, and suddenly you realize you need to look put together without making a whole project out of it? You gotta get your fit from Revolve Men. It's unique in that everything feels curated. You're not buried under endless pages of random stuff. Everything is styled so you can see how a full look comes together.

22:16Jessica Wynn:You find a piece you like, and the site helps you build from there. I also like they're constantly bringing in new brands, something like 50 to 60 a year, so it always feels current. They're really on the forefront of trends and getting fresh brands in front of people before everybody else is wearing them. And it works for all the different stuff you actually shop for. Work, workouts, weddings, vacations, spring break, summer plans, all of it. It's elevated without being too much. Plus, free two-day shipping is huge when you need something fast, and the 30-day returns are genuinely easy. They even include the return label in the box.

22:44Jessica Wynn:Go to revolve.com slash Jordan and use code Jordan for a 15 % off your entire order. That discount on men's products is not something they typically offer, so don't miss it. This episode is also sponsored by SimpliSafe. What always turned me off about traditional home security was how complicated they made everything. Long-term contracts, hidden fees, expensive monthly monitoring, and then you still have to wait around for a technician to come set the whole thing up, and it always felt like way more hassle than it should be. SimpliSafe makes the whole process easy. You can build a system for your home online, have it shipped right to your door, Set it up yourself without drilling holes or scheduling an appointment.

23:16Jessica Wynn:The app walks you through everything, and you can have a whole system set up and running in under an hour. It's a full system. Cameras, sensors for doors and windows, motion detection, protection for things like break-ins, fires and floods, and it's backed by 24-7 professional monitoring so there are people ready to respond if something actually goes wrong. For me, the biggest thing is peace of mind. Whether I'm going to bed or leaving town, I like knowing I can check the system and feel confident that everything's covered. We want you to experience the same peace of mind we do, which is why we've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer an exclusive discount to our listeners.

23:45Jessica Wynn:Right now, you can get 50 % off your news system by visiting simplisafe.com slash Jordan. That's half off at simplisafe.com slash Jordan. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Don't forget about our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. Two-minute read every Wednesday. Something practical you can apply right away, right out of the box. It is a great companion to the show. A little bit of wisdom from the show. A little bit of wisdom from our daily lives. Something I promise you will not regret taking the time to read. jordanharbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Yeah, there's definitely been times where, I mean, we used to use smoke in the beehives.

24:20Jessica Wynn:You basically have this little tea kettle with like a trigger and you squeeze it and smoke comes out and they just go about their business while you rip huge parts of their hive out and scrape wax off or like take honey out or take honeycomb out. But yeah, I mean, I didn't know that they would remember it. I kind of, that's, wow. Yeah, they're smarter than you think. Yeah, Yeah, I imagine bees kind of gossiping with their little dance. You know, it's just sort of like, hey, the guy's got a copy of Cat Fancy and he's not afraid to use it. I mean, who would think insects have memory at all? That's insane to me.

24:51Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, I mean, and something that might make you feel a little safer is that only female bees can sting. So male bees, which are called drones, they don't even have stingers. Their only job is to mate with a queen. That's it. And then they die immediately.

25:07Jessica Wynn:Wow. Wow. Death by sex. Immediate death by sex. Yes, yeah. Lame.

25:11Jordan Harbinger:During mating, the reproductive organ tears away when they detach from the queen. So they basically just fall out of the sky.

25:19Jessica Wynn:Oh, my God. Think about that. Just think about that, guys. You just detach. You put it in, but you can't take it out.

25:25Jordan Harbinger:The power of women. Yeah. Yeah.

25:27Jessica Wynn:Wow. That's horrifying. Nature does not do subtle, does it?

25:31Jordan Harbinger:Right. And the drones who don't get to mate, they don't forage, they don't build, they don't defend the hive, they don't clean. They just live in bachelor pads outside the hive, just kind of hanging around, eating honey, waiting for their shot.

25:47Jessica Wynn:Literally. So it's a frat house. Celibate, but no chores.

25:50Jordan Harbinger:Right. But only until fall, the season. Yeah. So then the worker bees kick them out of the hive to die in the cold to conserve food during winter. So you'll see dead drone bees around the hives when autumn comes.

26:04Jessica Wynn:That's right. Yeah, they're actually all over my driveway. I have to kind of be careful when I'm working out because if you're doing like burpees, there's just dead bees everywhere and they can still sting after they're dead. That's sort of a mechanical process. So let me get this straight. Male bees either die during sex or they spend their entire life eating honey and contributing absolutely nothing until they're left to freeze to death.

26:25Jordan Harbinger:That's the deal. Yeah. And bees don't mess around, man. The workers, meanwhile, run the whole place. People say they have an age based career ladder. So when a bee is born, she starts as a janitor, pretty much cleaning cells in the hive. Then after a few days, gets promoted to nurse bee feeding larva. Then she becomes a processor making honey. Then she'll handle climate control and defense. And finally, when she's older, which is around three weeks, she becomes a forager, flying out to collect nectar and pollen.

26:58Jessica Wynn:So bees have kind of like a corporate structure where you basically start in the mailroom and you work your way up to senior management. That's, I did not know that either.

27:06Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, basically, but it's flexible. What's really wild is when older bees have to take on jobs, usually done by younger bees. Like if the hive loses a bunch of young workers for whatever reason, their brains stop aging. So the mental stimulation of learning new tasks keeps their old bee brains young. You know, scientists are literally studying bees for dementia research because of this.

27:33Jessica Wynn:That does make sense, though, right? Because if everybody aged out and you lost all your young workers, there goes the whole hive. So this is an evolutionary pressure. Right, exactly. It's incredible. So when I'm 80, get on the equivalent of TikTok, keep learning, I don't know, learn a new language and start dating a 30-year-old. Got it. OK, cool.

27:49Jordan Harbinger:I like your confidence, Jordan, that a 30-year-old will want you when you're 80.

27:53Jessica Wynn:Well, it's amazing how much just a few million dollars can overcome the widest of age gaps. Love and a giant Swiss bank account really conquers all.

28:04Jordan Harbinger:So romantic. Yes. And kind of gross.

28:07Jessica Wynn:Yep, that too.

28:07Jordan Harbinger:Think less of a midlife crisis and more brain gym. So when older bees switch jobs, they have to learn these new skills. Their memory and learning ability improves. It's like cognitive physical therapy.

28:21Jessica Wynn:So all those in a midlife crisis, listen up. Don't buy a motorcycle. Learn some Chinese or something like that. Duolingo over Tinder.

28:29Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, that's much healthier advice, I think, at any age. But a lot more research is needed. But the takeaway is that learning new things and staying mentally active can literally reverse aspects of brain aging.

28:43Jessica Wynn:How long does an average bee live?

28:45Jordan Harbinger:I mean, it really varies. So for honeybees, a queen can live one, two, up to five years, actually. So think of it like an odometer, not really a calendar. You know, worker bees live about 30 days in the summer, but they'll live one to 200 days in the winter because they're not working as hard. But male bumblebees, they can live as short as a week.

29:09Jessica Wynn:The life of a male bumblebee is rough. So once these bees graduate, leave, they go pollinate, what is their life like then?

29:16Jordan Harbinger:Well, bumblebees can do what's called buzz pollinate. So some flowers, like tomatoes and blueberries, they hold their pollen really tight in structures that don't just open up. So bumblebees grab onto the flower, detach their wings from their flight muscles, and then they vibrate their entire body at high frequency to shake the pollen loose.

29:40Jessica Wynn:Wow. So bumblebees twerk pollen out of flowers. Yeah, pretty much. Bumblebees are out here grinding on flowers to get the goods.

29:51Jessica Wynn:And make it rain pollen afterwards. Do other bees throw nectar at them? No.

29:57Jordan Harbinger:They just move on to the next flower. And to do that, they use their incredible sense of smell that is processed through receptors on their antenna. So this sense allows them to locate nectar for miles around.

30:11Jessica Wynn:Oh, so they smell through their antenna. I didn't know that either.

30:14Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. And the ability is used by scientists to detect explosives. So they have 170 odorant receptors, which makes them way more sensitive than dogs. So scientists have trained honeybees to detect bombs and landmines by associating the scent with sugar water rewards.

30:35Jessica Wynn:So let me understand this. We have weaponized bees to de-weaponize bombs. That's awesome. Yeah, it's so awesome. That is the most human thing I've ever heard. These creatures are dying en masse. Ecosystems are collapsing. But first, can they help us with our wars somehow?

30:50Jordan Harbinger:And it turns out they're really good at it.

30:52Jessica Wynn:Yeah, I don't doubt that. I'm just sort of questioning our priorities here. We're building tiny war drones and they're trying to keep the house warm. And I don't know. So these are amazing creatures, really.

31:03Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. And in winter, some worker bees, they become heater bees. So they vibrate their flight muscles to generate heat without flying, maintaining the hive temperature at an incredible 95 degrees Fahrenheit. even if it's freezing outside. They can do this for months because they rotate shifts, so no single bee has to do it the entire time.

31:25Jessica Wynn:That sounds like the bee equivalent of a union. I know they kept their hive warm. I just forgot about how they do it.

31:30Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, it's incredible. And actually, the whole hive operates collectively. So bees figured out collective bargaining way before humans. They're really organized. And bumblebees leave scent markers on flowers they've already visited, and they can distinguish between their own scent marks and those left by other bees to avoid wasting time on depleted flowers.

31:54Jessica Wynn:So they can tell the difference between their own scent and the scent of other bees on a flower that they've already went to. That's cool.

32:00Jordan Harbinger:Right, yeah. So they don't waste energy revisiting flowers that they know are empty. I see. And their brains are just the size of poppy seeds. So which is incredible when we see the things they can be taught, like playing football.

32:15Jessica Wynn:You mean like soccer? So are they like golden retrievers? How do they play football? I don't get this.

32:20Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. To study their cognitive abilities, scientists taught bumblebees to roll tiny balls into goals in exchange for sugar water rewards. I mean, it's documented. You can look it up. They learned the game. They played a little bee version of football.

32:35Jessica Wynn:That's adorable and fascinating that they can learn tasks that are completely unnatural to them. Right. It's not a different dance or a different way of flying or something. It's an actual game.

32:44Jordan Harbinger:game, right?

32:45Jessica Wynn:Wow. So are they, are they, what are they, what else are they doing? Are they writing young adult fiction? Are there bee podcasts?

32:51Jordan Harbinger:Not that I know of, but maybe in another million years, we'll get some of those.

32:56Jessica Wynn:All right. Tell me about the queen bee, because I feel like this, we're always taught, you know, she's the Beyonce of the hive, whatever, running things with an iron fist or an iron wing or whatever. But I don't know. I'm, a lot of the things I feel like I thought I knew about bees are just totally not true.

33:09Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. The queen bee, I mean, there's a lot of common misconceptions. The queen doesn't rule anything. She doesn't give any orders. There's no strategy meetings. Her only job, literally her only job, is laying eggs.

33:25Jessica Wynn:So the queen is like a baby factory.

33:28Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, mostly, but she's not useless. You know, she controls the hive chemically, so she releases pheromones that keep everyone organized. Who works? Who reproduces? when the hive stays calm. She just kind of sets the tone for the hive.

33:44Jessica Wynn:So less queen, ruler, authoritarian, more sort of vibe, more DJ, more vibe manager.

33:50Jordan Harbinger:I have a friend who works at his kid's elementary school as the, literally, it's called the vibe manager. He just hangs out in the hallway.

33:58Jessica Wynn:That's weird.

34:00Jordan Harbinger:So it exists, yeah.

34:01Jessica Wynn:Okay.

34:01Jordan Harbinger:But so the queen sets the mood. If her pheromones weaken, the workers go, oh, we're going to need a new CEO. here.

34:09Jessica Wynn:So we've been calling it a monarchy when it's actually more like a democracy.

34:12Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, it's more like a collective decision making system. So the workers decide where to build, when to swarm and whether or not to replace the queen.

34:22Jessica Wynn:So it's actually be communism. They can just replace her. Got it.

34:26Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. If the queen isn't performing well, like she's not laying enough eggs, getting old, sick, whatever might be making her underperform, the workers will just raise a new queen and kill the old one.

34:38Jessica Wynn:Totally on brand for communism, by the way. Yeah. You know what? Time to get executed.

34:43Jordan Harbinger:And they don't only make new queens when something's wrong. They also do it when they want to swarm. So that's when half the hive leaves with the old queen to start a new colony. The remaining bees raise a brand new queen. It's kind of like bee franchising.

34:59Jessica Wynn:So if the queen doesn't run things, what makes her special? Just laying eggs and reproduction.

35:03Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, and her diet. Any female larva could be queen. It's the same genes. The workers just feed one larva nothing but royal jelly. So biologically, she's the only female bee in the hive whose reproductive organs fully develop. She can lay fertilized eggs that become female workers or unfertilized eggs that become male drones just off a steady diet of royal jelly.

35:30Jessica Wynn:Okay. What is that exactly? It sounds like, I'm going to go ahead and guess people pay insane amounts of money to buy and put on their feet or something, but what is it for the bees?

35:38Jordan Harbinger:You do see it in some cosmetics, but...

35:40Jessica Wynn:I'm sure.

35:41Jordan Harbinger:It's this protein-rich substance secreted by young worker bees.

35:45Jessica Wynn:Oh! Giggity-giggity-giggity-goo! All right, I'm done.

35:48Jordan Harbinger:If a larva gets fed exclusively royal jelly instead of the regular bee food, it develops into a queen instead of a worker.

35:58Jessica Wynn:The workers choose who becomes a queen by deciding who gets the good food, I guess. So the queen is just chosen. I thought there was a fight or some kind of birthright or something. No.

36:06Jordan Harbinger:Well, yeah, it gets better. When a new queen is about to hatch from her cell, she makes a sound called tooting.

36:16Jordan Harbinger:Not quite that. She toots. It's a high frequency vibration. And the other unhatched queens, because the workers usually raise, you know, several queens as backups, the ones that are still in their cells respond with quacking sounds. That's hilarious. What's the quacking about? Why do they quack? Yeah, bee quacking, it's the sound made by virgin queens that are still inside their cells, responding to the tooting sound of a newly emerged queen. So it's a form of communication with the worker bees that signals the queen is ready to emerge. And the first queen to hatch goes around and stings the other queens to death through their cells before they can hatch.

36:58Jordan Harbinger:Or sometimes two queens might hatch at the same time and then they fight to the death.

37:03Jessica Wynn:Imagine being born and they're like, all right, you have to fight another baby to the death.

37:08Jordan Harbinger:I think I would have won. Yeah, you would have won.

37:11Jessica Wynn:I knew there was a fight to the death. So toot, quack, kill. What a twist on the old classic.

37:15Jordan Harbinger:Right. And remember, the workers are watching this whole thing happen. They allow it to happen. They could intervene, but they don't.

37:24Jessica Wynn:Well, watching two queens fight might be, you know, pretty entertaining. Do they do it in the royal jelly?

37:30Jordan Harbinger:That would be amazing. But settle down. What happens next? It's not that sexy. So whichever bee becomes queen gets right to laying eggs. The workers are still making all the decisions. And if she's not performing well, she's out of there replaced like pretty much immediately. Wow.

37:50Jessica Wynn:So she wins the battle royale fight to the death, and her prize is a job with no decision-making power that she can be fired from at any time by getting murdered. Yes.

37:58Jordan Harbinger:Hard pass. That sucks. Yeah. And then she's continued to be fed a strict diet of royal jelly, and she's just expected to lay eggs, eggs, eggs constantly, thousands a day.

38:11Jessica Wynn:Wow. What a prize for winning the queen title. I feel like we're pretty aggressive as humans about taking stuff from bees. Because so the royal jelly, you said it's for sale at the store. Yeah, it's something we can we also steal from them.

38:23Jordan Harbinger:It is. You can buy it. Humans are very thorough when stealing from the hive. You know, we take honey, wax, pollen and that royal jelly.

38:31Jessica Wynn:Right. Yeah. I was mentioning before you could pretty much use everything. I forgot about the royal jelly. So bee pollen. That's also crunchy health food stuff. You can get it in your bougie smoothie granola bowl or whatever at Air One. Right.

38:42Jordan Harbinger:Exactly.

38:42Jessica Wynn:By the way, how is bee pollen different from just pollen? Is it not just pollen?

38:46Jordan Harbinger:Well, it's different after the bees bring it back to the hive. And it's basically their protein storage. It's super nutrient dense and bees collect pollen from flowers, but then they mix it with a little nectar and their bee saliva. Then they store it in the comb. So it's packed with protein, amino acids, vitamins, and humans eat it as a supplement. So as we're saying, like we can eat the entire honeycomb, the wax, everything, which I've done too with a beekeeper friend of mine. And it's hot and sweet and delicious. And then when you chew on that wax after the flavor is gone, it's like the best gum, right?

39:24Jessica Wynn:I have eaten many a hive. We used to keep bees before we had kids. As I mentioned, we got rid of them. But there's so much in there that at some point you're taking it and it's actually for their own good, right? Because they can. Right. And you can take so much of this stuff out. And the pollen's actually really cool. It's beautiful. It's like this sort of multicolor, light pastel mix of stuff, and you can put it on ice cream, and it looks gorgeous. It's really interesting.

39:47Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, the colors are beautiful.

39:50Jessica Wynn:Agree, yeah.

39:50Jordan Harbinger:It's kind of like eating their architecture, but yeah, sometimes it's necessary. I recently met a honey sommelier, which I did not know existed. That's a thing, huh? So there's definitely a lot of flavors and notes to pay attention to. And the royal jelly, that's also protein-rich substance that worker bees make to feed the queen. And then people harvest that and eat it too.

40:12Jessica Wynn:What does it taste like? I've never stolen my bee's royal jelly.

40:16Jordan Harbinger:It's kind of tart. It's slightly bitter. It's like a weird greenish color. But some people think it has health benefits, anti-aging properties, but the science doesn't really back that up. It does have antioxidants. So the wellness community makes the leap that it has these anti-aging benefits. But I'm not actually convinced on that.

40:37Jessica Wynn:There's a lot of honey scams and stuff like that. Nonsense out there. In fact, this is not super related, but I went to I think it was in Australia, went to a farmer's market. And this guy had all these different buckets of honey, air quotes, honey. And I went with Jen and she was a beekeeper at the time. Right. And this guy's like, yeah, I have honey where the bees have only fed on raspberries and honey where the bees have only fed on coconut. coconuts or pineapple. And it just tasted like each one tasted like candy. Jen told me in Chinese, she's like, this guy's cheating people. This is just corn syrup.

41:07Jordan Harbinger:This is going to say it's just all high fructose. Yeah. Yeah.

41:10Jessica Wynn:First of all, the consistency was off, but it was like too clean, right? Honey's kind of dirty looking like real honey. It's not clean. They especially when it's not filtered. And it's like you can't just get bright red raspberry flavored honey. You can't tell bees until we get those bee drone robots that tell them where to go. You can't just tell bees, hey, only feed on raspberries. That's not. That's impossible. You can't do that. No, they're not just going to go get pineapple. That's not possible. They're going to go get a bunch of different stuff from thousands of different flowers, millions all over the place.

41:41Jessica Wynn:And so it's just totally ridiculous. What a jerk. Yeah, I know. I know. It's like it's not that hard to get real honey. Just get real honey. But I guess if you're just a scammer, who cares? Right. Order some corn syrup and put flavor in there. So we're eating hives thinking it'll make us immortal. What else are we stealing?

41:56Jordan Harbinger:So the propolis, which is the sticky resinous mixture that bees make from tree sap and beeswax. So that's what they use to seal cracks in the hive and they disinfect everything. It has these antimicrobial properties, like honey does too, but the propolis is like hive caulk meets medicine. Why are we eating that? So we mostly use it in tinctures and health supplements. It's very sticky, so you wouldn't just eat it straight.

42:25Jessica Wynn:Okay, we're at least, we're not eating the bees themselves, although I do feel like I've also seen that on those documentaries about, like, wild China, where some guy goes and gets a hornet the size of your hand from a tree and grills it.

42:37Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, I mean, actually, in some cultures, particularly Southeast Asia, people do eat bee larvae and pupae. They're high in protein.

42:46Jessica Wynn:Yeah, so we're eating their children savage.

42:48Jordan Harbinger:I know, but they're considered a delicacy, and they're often grilled or boiled.

42:52Jessica Wynn:Okay, so we take their honey, their honeycomb, their pollen, their royal jelly, their medicine, and their offspring. Is there anything we don't take from them?

43:02Jordan Harbinger:Nothing comes to mind, especially when we force their migration. So every year between January and February, California experiences one of the largest animal migrations in the world, about 2.7 million beehives, which contains about 54 billion bees. They're trucked into California's Central Valley.

43:25Jessica Wynn:OK, so 54 billion bees. Imagine you don't want to drive those trucks. Imagine. Oh, my gosh. What do you do? You just pull over to get gas and you have bees everywhere. I mean, are they sealed? I guess they must be. They're contained in the boxes.

43:38Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, they're not just flying around, but it's essential agriculture. So California produces about 80 % of the world's almonds, and almonds are entirely dependent on bee pollination. So there's about 1.5 million acres of almond trees in the state of California. So we transport about 90 % of commercial hives in.

44:02Jessica Wynn:That can't be sustainable. I know we've done whole shows on almonds and how they're supposedly horrendous for the environment here in California over water use and droughts. And now we're throwing billions of bees into the mix.

44:13Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. Well, it's a little more complicated than just almonds bad. So I would like to fact check those episodes because there's actually a lot of misinformation out there around almonds. And most of it is pushed by the dairy industry running this anti-almond propaganda. Huh.

44:30Jessica Wynn:OK.

44:30Jordan Harbinger:So almonds use a lot of water, sure, but so does every crop. And dairy uses more water per calorie and way more water per gram of protein. But all agriculture in California is really water intensive.

44:45Jessica Wynn:I see. So it's not, hey, don't farm almonds here. It's, hey, don't farm anywhere in this area of California. Nobody's arguing that, right? It's just farmers arguing over what should be grown where.

44:56Jordan Harbinger:I mean, you know, when you drive up the five, you see all those signs on farms about the water and everything. You know, it's a big political topic.

45:05Jessica Wynn:Yeah. The Dust Bowl. Don't vote for the Dust Bowl. And then you're like, I got to roll up my windows because it smells like cow crap for the next 50 miles.

45:12Jordan Harbinger:And that's not what the dairy industry cares about. What they care about is how popular alternative milks have come.

45:19Jessica Wynn:So, oh, that's what it's about. Almond milk. Look at that. That's interesting. OK, so almonds just have bad PR, basically.

45:29Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, right. And the bigger issue for bees isn't almonds specifically. It's the monoculture. So a million acres of one crop blooming at the exact same time. That's what forces us to truck in millions of hives all at once. Like, that's the stressor.

45:45Jessica Wynn:OK, so the problem is not almonds. It's that we've turned nature into one giant Amazon warehouse for whatever product, whatever crop.

45:53Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, kind of. I mean, almond season is the biggest payday of the year for beekeepers because they can charge up to$225 per hive just for almond pollination. So they bring their bees from all over the country. Mostly they come from Montana, North Dakota, Florida, and Texas.

46:13Jessica Wynn:So bee Coachella, basically. Right.

46:16Jordan Harbinger:If Coachella involved loading billions of insects onto 18-wheelers and driving them across state lines, then yes.

46:24Jessica Wynn:Okay, so what could go wrong? Man, snakes on a plane? No, it's bees at a truck stop now.

46:29Jordan Harbinger:I would watch that movie.

46:31Jessica Wynn:You would, for sure.

46:33Jordan Harbinger:But the bees are trucked long distances, which stresses them out. So the vibrations and the fumes can harm them. And they arrive in January and February when they're at the weakest point in their life cycle. So they're supposed to be dormant, but instead they're being forced to wake up and work. You know, it's crazy. beekeepers have to feed them supplements and stimulants to get them active enough to pollinate. I mean, many beekeepers feed their bee supplements regardless of travel, but it's absolutely necessary for the bees that are being moved around.

47:05Jessica Wynn:Okay, I'm doubling down on bees at a truck stop now because if we're giving bees stimulants, cocaine bees sounds like a solid Netflix runner. Wow.

47:13Jordan Harbinger:Oh, maybe it could be a mashup with like the next Sharknado movie or something.

47:17Jessica Wynn:That's right. Cocaine bear? No. Cocaine bees.

47:20Jordan Harbinger:It's mostly sugar water and pollen supplements, but yeah, a little bee cocaine. And then there's the issue that almonds bloom all at once. So you have billions of bees in one concentrated area feeding on one type of food for weeks, which is just nutritionally terrible for them. It's like if you ate nothing but rice for a month.

47:44Jessica Wynn:Yeah, that sounds like my trip to Laos. Okay, so this happens every year, every single year?

47:49Jordan Harbinger:Every year. And after almond season, many beekeepers truck their bees to pollinate other crops. So blueberries in Maine, cucumbers in North Carolina, cherries in Washington state. You know, these bees spend half the year on trucks.

48:05Jessica Wynn:Oh, man. So it's like hives full of slave labor. And beekeepers are OK with this because they need the money, right?

48:11Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. I mean, they don't have much choice. One beekeeper told researchers he loses about 10 % of his bees every time he sends them to California, but the money is too good to refuse. And here's where it gets worse.

48:24Jessica Wynn:Of course it does.

48:26Jordan Harbinger:The security around these hives is almost non-existent. So they're dropped off in orchards or holding lots that aren't fenced or guarded. And they're visible from the road a lot of times. And a hive renting for$225 is worth a lot to thieves.

48:44Jessica Wynn:Oh, yeah. Are you going to talk about bee heists?

48:46Jordan Harbinger:Absolutely. So in 2024, nearly 2 ,000 hives were stolen in just California's Central Valley. The year before, it was over 2 ,300 hives.

48:58Jessica Wynn:So 2 ,000 hives. How do you steal 2 ,000 beehives? You just take the whole truck, right?

49:02Jordan Harbinger:I mean, with forklifts, trucks, and usually under the cover of darkness, right? So sometimes hundreds of hives at once. In January 2024, almost 500 hives were stolen in a single night from a beekeeper from Montana. Wow. That's worth over$400 ,000. Oh my God. For bees.

49:25Jessica Wynn:Yeah.

49:25Jordan Harbinger:And that's just the rental value. The replacement cost, it's even higher because you lose the established colonies. Right. And beekeepers do often invest their whole lives into these bees, you know, they're livestock. So there is this emotional, professional toll.

49:43Jessica Wynn:Yeah, I would imagine. So what do the thieves do with them? Just rent them out?

49:47Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. I mean, they spray paint over the owner's markings and sell them to almond growers who either don't know they're stolen or just don't care enough to ask questions.

49:57Jessica Wynn:Bees die during sex, starve in retirement and work themselves to death. So quit your complaining. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by WhatNot. If you've been hearing about WhatNot and you've been thinking, what is WhatNot? Why is everybody talking about it? Here's the deal. Live shopping on WhatNot is absolutely blowing up right now. It's popping up on shows. It's got incredible app rankings. And I've seen the seller numbers. People are building real businesses on this thing. If you've ever sold online, you know the usual pain. You put up a listing. Maybe somebody finds it.

50:25Jessica Wynn:Maybe they don't. Maybe they buy. Maybe they bounce. WhatNot is different because you're live in real time, showing people what you got, answering questions, building rapport, making sales right there on the spot. That's the magic of it. It's not just a marketplace. It's a relationship-driven platform. And buyers are not casually poking around for 30 seconds. They're in there for more than an hour a day. They're bidding, they buy, they hang out, they come back. So whether you're selling collectibles, electronics, beauty, luxury fashion, even cookies, there's a real audience there. Sellers on Whatnot move way more product than on traditional marketplaces because they're not just listing items.

50:55Jessica Wynn:They are creating trust and connection. The number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on WhatNot has doubled. For a limited time, WhatNot will match your first $150 sold in the first month. Visit WhatNot.com slash sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. WhatNot.com slash sell. This episode is brought to you in part by Lufthansa. When people talk about travel, they usually focus on the destination, the hotel, the restaurants, all the stuff that happens after you land. But the flight is part of the experience too. Just like a great hotel can shape an entire trip, so can a great flight.

51:25Jessica Wynn:That's exactly what Lufthansa Allegra is built around. On a long haul route, comfort matters more than people realize. If you're cramped, tired, and can't relax, you feel it the second you land. But when a flight is comfortable, you can actually stretch out, rest, work, or just enjoy the ride. It changes the whole trip. I was thinking about that on my recent Intercontinental Lufthansa flight. I got so comfortable, I honestly didn't want the flight to end, which is not something you say very often after a long international trip. That's why Lufthansa Allegra stands out. It's built around the idea that people travel differently.

51:50Jessica Wynn:Lufthansa Allegra's business class has five seat options. You've got the suite, the privacy seat, and the extra long bed, the extra space seat, and the classic seat, so you can choose what works for you. And that's what I like most. It feels elevated but still practical. More privacy, more comfort, more thoughtful design for the way people actually travel now. Visit Lufthansa.com and search for Allegris to learn more. Lufthansa Allegris. All it takes is a yes. Limited availability on select routes. More routes coming soon. Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

52:25Jessica Wynn:Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. So there's a black market for bees, at least in California.

52:32Jordan Harbinger:Oh, yeah. And here's the other thing. There's basically one law enforcement officer in California working these cases full time.

52:41Jessica Wynn:OK, one guy is going to stop this. Yeah, and I love him.

52:46Jordan Harbinger:His name is Deputy Rowdy Freeman of Butte County.

52:49Jessica Wynn:His name is Rowdy Freeman.

52:51Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, he rules.

52:52Jessica Wynn:Wow.

52:53Jordan Harbinger:And he's completely overwhelmed. California has state task forces for horse theft and cattle rustling, but nothing for bees. And Rowdy Freeman has documented clear evidence that stolen hives are being transported across state lines, but the federal government won't get involved. The FBI won't comment on if they're even investigating.

53:15Jessica Wynn:Probably not that high of a priority for them, but my God, interstate bee trafficking. And nobody cares other than pew, pew, pew, rowdy Freeman. Yeah, right.

53:25Jordan Harbinger:Which is why beekeepers are now installing GPS trackers in the hives, setting up hidden cameras. And even then, thieves are a step ahead. In 2018, Freeman found what he calls a chop shop for bees.

53:41Jessica Wynn:A chop shop. What does that mean?

53:43Jordan Harbinger:Over 2 ,500 stolen hives worth nearly a million dollars were found. And the thieves were breaking apart hives. They were mixing equipment from different beekeepers and reselling them. It was organized.

53:56Jessica Wynn:So Rowdy Freeman is out there alone fighting bee crime. And all of this is happening because we need billions of bees to pollinate the almonds in California for like two weeks a year. Yes. That is insane. This entire system is crazy.

54:09Jordan Harbinger:And it gets worse because this all leads to colony collapse disorder.

54:14Jessica Wynn:I feel like I've heard about this.

54:15Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, it's when worker bees, they just mysteriously disappear from a hive, like just vanish. So I don't know if anybody saw that movie Weapons, but all the kids disappear. That's what happened to the bees.

54:29Jessica Wynn:Right.

54:29Jordan Harbinger:And the queen is still there. There's food. There are some nurse bees taking care of larvae. But all the foragers just abandon ship and never come back. And they don't just leave. They disappear without a trace. There's no bodies. There's no corpses piled up outside the hive. They fly away and never return.

54:49Jessica Wynn:So it's the bee rapture. This is straight out of some M. Night Shyallaman flick.

54:54Jordan Harbinger:I know, kind of. Nobody knows where they go. They just don't come back to the hive.

54:59Jessica Wynn:Yeah, that's horrifying. And this is a result from moving the hives all over the place?

55:03Jordan Harbinger:I mean, it's inconclusive, but that is one theory. So it peaked in 2006 and 2007. Some beekeepers lost up to 90 % of their hives. They just walked out to their epiaries and found them almost empty. Queens sitting there with a handful of bees, surrounded by full stores of honey, but no workers. It was devastating. They did actually call it the bee apocalypse. And here's what made it even more mysterious. It was clearly different from pesticide kills.

55:34Jessica Wynn:So bee unsolved mysteries. So how can you, I hate that I'm doing this, how can you be sure it's not from pesticides?

55:42Jordan Harbinger:Can you hear that?

55:44Jessica Wynn:What, the Unsolved Mysteries soundtrack? Yes, I can.

55:46Jordan Harbinger:I'm sorry, I didn't, it just went on for a long time. Yeah, I couldn't find the fade out button. When pesticides kill a hive, though, you find piles of dead bees in the hive outside the entrance. They're all scattered around, like it's obvious. But with colony collapse disorder, there are no bodies. The bees just weren't there anymore. So scientists scramble to figure out why. Was it pesticides, parasites, disease, stress, malnutrition? Nobody knows.

56:18Jessica Wynn:But it's a mystery. How have they not figured this out yet?

56:21Jordan Harbinger:I mean, the leading theory is that it's a combination of factors. So varroa mites weaken the bees, pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, affecting their navigation and cognition, poor nutrition for monoculture diets, diseases, and the stress of being trucked around the country. And the mites alone are a nightmare. You know, they're huge parasites that feed on bee larvae, causing deformities and they spread viruses. They can wipe out entire colonies if left untreated. They transformed beekeeping so much that people talk about pre-Varroa times.

57:00Jessica Wynn:But pesticides can't be good for them either, right?

57:03Jordan Harbinger:No. And these neonicotinoids are particularly bad. There are these neurotoxins that affect bees' ability to navigate, learn, and remember, including learning that waggle dance. So bees exposed to these pesticides, they might fly out to forage and then literally forget how to get home.

57:23Jessica Wynn:Oof. Okay, so we're giving bees dementia with pesticides. That's sad.

57:26Jordan Harbinger:Yeah.

57:27Jessica Wynn:Is colony collapse disorder, is that still going on? Is that still happening?

57:31Jordan Harbinger:I mean, cases declined after 2015, but bee losses overall have continued at about 30 to 40 percent every winter. So the mysterious vanishing isn't happening as much, but bees are still dying at alarming rates. Beekeepers have to constantly rebuild their colonies just to stay in business. It's become normalized, though, but it's definitely not sustainable.

57:55Jessica Wynn:So what are we doing about this? How can they fix that?

57:57Jordan Harbinger:There are efforts to breed disease-resistant bees, develop better treatments for varroa mites, restrict certain pesticides, you know, plant more wildflower habitat. But the fundamental problem is that we've built an agricultural system that's completely dependent on mass-producing and transporting billions of bees to pollinate monoculture crops. And that system is killing them.

58:22Jessica Wynn:So we need the bees to pollinate the crops, but pollinating the crops is killing the bees.

58:26Jordan Harbinger:Correct. It's a nightmare.

58:28Jessica Wynn:Okay, so we talked all about honeybees. You mentioned there's 20 ,000 other species, or 19 ,999 other species. What about the other kinds of bees?

58:36Jordan Harbinger:Well, honeybees get all the attention because they're economically valuable. They make the honey. They're managed by humans. They pollinate our crops. But wild bees are in much worse shape. So the American bumblebee has declined 89 % in the past two decades and completely disappeared from eight states.

58:55Jessica Wynn:Wow, declined 89%.

58:57Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, and it's not just bumblebees. Nearly 35 % of all invertebrate pollinators worldwide face extinction. And wild bees are often better pollinators than honeybees for certain crops. You know, bumblebees, for example, they're better at pollinating tomatoes, blueberries, cranberries, anything that needs that buzz pollination.

59:19Jessica Wynn:Right, the twerking.

59:20Jordan Harbinger:Right, the twerking. But we've poured all our resources into honeybees because they're the ones we can truck around and rent out. Meanwhile, wild bee populations are crashing and barely anyone's paying attention.

59:35Jessica Wynn:I see memes that say bees die, the world's over. What's going to happen if honeybees disappear?

59:40Jordan Harbinger:Well, wild bees could pick up some of the slack, but not nearly enough. We'd see massive crop failures. Food prices would skyrocket. Some crops would basically disappear. Almonds, for example, would be gone. Apples, cherries, blueberries, they would all massively be reduced. So bee pollination adds about$18 billion annually to U.S. agriculture. Globally, it's in the hundreds of billions. I mean, losing that would be catastrophic.

1:00:10Jessica Wynn:So what's the solution? Are scientists working on alternatives? Like, where do we go from here?

1:00:15Jordan Harbinger:I mean, they're trying. There's research into self-pollinating almond trees, genetically engineered bees that are more disease-resistant, even those robotic bees, but they're nowhere near efficient enough. So a real bee can visit hundreds of flowers in a day. The best those robot bees we have can do is maybe a dozen. And they're expensive, and they break constantly. So the real solutions are pretty straightforward. I mean, stop using harmful pesticides. plant diverse native flowers to provide better nutrition, stop plowing up every bit of wild habitat, reduce our carbon emissions to slow climate change, and stop forcing bees to work in these massive monoculture systems.

1:01:01Jessica Wynn:Well, who's the communist now, Jessica? So basically, stop doing all the things that make industrial agriculture profitable slash possible. That is very unlikely to happen. So we're just going to keep doing this until the whole system collapses.

1:01:13Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, unless we change course. But there are things individuals can do, like planting native flowers and stop using pesticides at your home. And you can support local beekeepers who aren't trucking their bees across the country. Buy organic when possible. Vote for politicians who support environmental protections. You know, create bee-friendly habitats if you can.

1:01:37Jessica Wynn:So it's the classic systemic problem that requires systemic solutions, but here are some individual actions that might help marginally a tiny bit, maybe. So it's like recycling all over again. Yeah, unfortunately. Is there any good news about bees that you can share?

1:01:51Jordan Harbinger:Well, in Australia, when it gets too hot, nectar and some flowers ferments into alcohol, which is cool.

1:01:58Jessica Wynn:That is cool.

1:01:58Jordan Harbinger:And bees drink it, they get drunk, and they stumble around. And then there are bouncer bees at the hive entrance who won't let the drunk bees back in until they sober up. Bees have bouncers?

1:02:11Jessica Wynn:Why? Why can't you go home drunk? I thought this was a free country, man.

1:02:15Jordan Harbinger:No, remember, this is communism.

1:02:17Jessica Wynn:All right.

1:02:18Jordan Harbinger:They're very strict about it. No drunk bees allowed in the hive. And bees are extremely clean. So they leave the hive specifically to poop on these cleansing flights because they refuse to mess up their home. I mean, they'll hold it in for months during winter rather than poop inside.

1:02:37Jessica Wynn:Well, I could never be a bee. They have a lot more self-control than I do. I've been known to go home from the mall just to come back and relax on the old home throne. Sorry, Jen. TMI, everyone. All right. Please say something, Jessica. Anything.

1:02:52Jordan Harbinger:Well, something to think about when you're eating honey is that a single worker bee only produces about one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime. So every time you pour honey on your toast, you're consuming the life's work of hundreds of bees. Wow. Well, I'm fine with it.

1:03:15Jessica Wynn:I mean, we're monsters, but I'm fine with it.

1:03:17Jordan Harbinger:I mean, it's delicious. But we need to realize just how fascinating bees are. You know, honeycombs are hexagons because it's mathematically the most efficient shape to hold the most honey while using the least amount of wax. A Roman scholar proposed this in 36 BCE, but it wasn't mathematically proven until 1999.

1:03:39Jessica Wynn:So bees were doing advanced geometry for millions of years before humans could even prove why it worked. That's crazy. Meanwhile, I can barely do my taxes. That's really incredible that they sort of evolved to figure this out.

1:03:50Jordan Harbinger:They're so cool. Another wild thing is that honey never goes bad. So archaeologists found 3 ,000-year-old honey in Egyptian tombs. One of them was in King Tut's tomb, and it was still good. So presumably, if we wanted to, we could eat 3 ,000-year-old King Tut honey. Wow. Archaeologists apparently tasted it. They said it tasted just like honey.

1:04:14Jessica Wynn:There you go.

1:04:15Jordan Harbinger:So if your honey has an expiration date, there's a lot of stuff that's not honey in there.

1:04:20Jessica Wynn:The bees will inherit the earth, but at least they'll have honey.

1:04:23Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, definitely. Really? Bee venom contains something called melatonin, which scientists think might help prevent HIV and treat rheumatoid arthritis. Wow. It's early research, but melatonin can destroy the protective envelope around HIV, potentially preventing infection.

1:04:45Jessica Wynn:What? We need to get the funding for this research. I do remember people getting bee stings or voluntarily trying to get bee stings on knees and elbows for pain relief. Is that the same thing?

1:04:53Jordan Harbinger:Right. Yeah. It's getting intentionally stung is called apotherapy. And the idea is that the bee venom's anti-inflammatory properties might reduce arthritis pain. So the science is promising, but the whole just sting yourself thing, that's not exactly FDA approved.

1:05:11Jessica Wynn:Yeah. Doesn't feel like great health care, I suppose. But bees do seem to have a lot of power we can unlock. That's amazing.

1:05:18Jordan Harbinger:I mean, yeah, they're overachievers for sure. And we don't think of them this way, but bees, they can and do sleep. So forager bees need rest. And when they do, their antenna droop, their body temperature drops, and they become unresponsive. Photos of it are actually kind of adorable. They look dead, but they're just napping. And if you need to wake them up, you can use the shaking signal, which is basically just vibrating near them.

1:05:46Jessica Wynn:That's really funny. So bees have a snooze button. That's why we can steal from them so easily. They just sleep in on the job. How long have humans been stealing parts of the hive? Do we know how long humans have been interacting with bees besides getting stung?

1:05:57Jordan Harbinger:People have been gathering honey from wild bees for 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 years at least, based on cave paintings. And beekeeping, like actively managing colonies, has been around for at least 4 ,000 years. We have Egyptian tomb paintings showing people pouring honey into jars and removing it from hives.

1:06:18Jessica Wynn:So the Egyptians were also beekeepers.

1:06:20Jordan Harbinger:Very advanced beekeepers. They had pottery hives arranged in orderly rows, which is amazing. Beekeeping was considered a highly skilled profession. Now it's a dying profession, unfortunately. Between the losses, the costs, the theft, the stress, a lot of beekeepers are getting out of the business. Although backyard beekeeping, I guess what you and Jen were doing, for personal use, that does seem to be growing.

1:06:47Jessica Wynn:Yeah, a lost craft. It's definitely kind of one of those hipster things. We went to some beekeeping classes and it was all like guys who make their own kombucha and bread and infuse their own alcohol. And I was the only guy that didn't have a mustache that had wax in it. But like I said, we stopped beekeeping when we had kids because no time and toddler. Well, toddlers plus beehives on a 10 ,000 square foot lot is a bit tight. And Jen was getting stung here and there, even though she decided she didn't need the bee suit anymore. Guess what? Still needed the bee suit. So I was like, you know what?

1:07:19Jessica Wynn:Wow.

1:07:19Jordan Harbinger:The confidence.

1:07:20Jessica Wynn:I know. Well, a lot of beekeepers, they're kind of like, nah, I'm just going to go do this with no bee suit. And they either don't get stung or they ignore it. I don't really get it. I didn't get that far. I kept my bee suit.

1:07:32Jordan Harbinger:Remember, they do recognize you. So if they like you, I guess it's possible.

1:07:36Jessica Wynn:Yeah. I don't know if they like the guy who's in there scraping wax off the frame and stuff, but who knows? Yeah, maybe.

1:07:41Jordan Harbinger:I mean, it is a high stakes combo for kids. You know, don't touch the stove is hard enough. Don't antagonize 40 ,000 stinging insects out back. That would be like next level parenting. But people have been doing it forever. You know, in ancient Greece, beekeeping was called an agricultural art and was discussed extensively by Aristotle. In China, there are ancient texts describing bee management. It's considered the second oldest profession.

1:08:10Jessica Wynn:The second oldest after?

1:08:12Jordan Harbinger:Use your imagination.

1:08:13Jessica Wynn:Okay. So humans have been keeping bees as long as, almost as long as humans have been having sex for money.

1:08:20Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, basically.

1:08:21Jessica Wynn:Okay. Wow. Well, I'm realizing that bees are running a more sophisticated operation than most governments. They're smarter than I am. We've built an entire agricultural system that is simultaneously dependent on them while also killing them. And we've been robbing them for 10 ,000 years and we're potentially also losing them entirely.

1:08:38Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, it's a lot. And remember that it's not just about honeybees. it's about all pollinators. So support policies that protect wild habitats and restrict harmful pesticides. A great way to help bees just in your community is not buying plants at a big box store because that limits the foreign pesticides and things you would introduce. So individual actions do matter, but we also need big policy changes. Without them, we're looking at a future with a lot less food, much higher prices, and ecosystems that are fundamentally broken.

1:09:15Jessica Wynn:Great. No pressure. Well, thank you for teaching us that bees quack, get wasted, have bouncers, twerk flowers, might cure HIV, and are better at math than most of us. This has been enlightening and terrifying in equal measure.

1:09:28Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. And remember, don't make enemies with bees. They know what you look like.

1:09:32Jessica Wynn:Too late. Way too late. But I'll try to make amends by planting some flowers. Thanks, Jess. This episode is, I hate myself, sure to create a lot of buzz. And thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday directly to me, Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show at JordanHarbinger.com slash deals. I'm at JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Jessica on her sub stacks between the lines and where shadows linger. And we'll link to those in the show notes.

1:10:02Jessica Wynn:Her work is also on Instagram at NeverMetJessicas. That's plural. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sidlowskis, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. Yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Also, we of course try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked. So consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love.

1:10:34Jessica Wynn:And if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time. You're about to hear a preview that may completely reframe how you think about nuclear power. What if the energy source we've been taught to fear is actually one of the safest and cleanest tools we have?

1:10:57Jordan Harbinger:We're very familiar with electricity. You get home, you turn on the lights, you charge your phone, charge your computer, do all the things that we do without thinking twice about electricity, right? But electricity is a secondary source of energy. The primary sources of energy that we use are coal, oil, methane gas, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Nuclear is actually the largest source of clean energy in the United States. It's the second largest source of clean energy in the world. And what I mean by that is that whenever we make electricity with nuclear, we're not releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or even particulate matter.

1:11:37Jordan Harbinger:So there are no emissions that happen whenever you're creating electricity with nuclear. So it's just to say, you know, everything that's related to nuclear accidents in Chernobyl is completely overblown. Because people tend to think generally like everybody died and it became this wasteland and nobody can go in. And so it's interesting, right, that we have all these weird fears about nuclear when the facts and reality just point to it being actually extremely safe. The biggest energy disaster in history was actually a hydropower dam collapse. So entire villages were swept away. It's estimated that 200 ,000 people died.

1:12:11Jordan Harbinger:He would need like at least 200 Chernobyls happening every single year for nuclear to be as dangerous as fossil fuels. What about the 4 million premature deaths from burning fossil fuels? Why are people so afraid of nuclear?

1:12:25Jessica Wynn:Hear the science behind the stigma with Isabel Boehmke on episode 1277 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

1:12:52Jessica Wynn:and misinformation. It's called the Conspirituality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic dive deep into how this stuff spreads from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies. An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to Fool, which if you listen to the show, you know I'm all about that.

1:13:22Jessica Wynn:From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspirituality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics. Find Conspirituality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Saving money on everything you need at Menards. Your roof is the first line of defense against the elements, and it enhances the appearance of your home's exterior. Owens Corning shingles offer ultimate protection and impressive curb appeal. Choose from 26 colors of Owens Corning Duration Shingles and transform your home today. Shop our selection of roofing products on Menards.com.

1:13:58Jessica Wynn:Plus, check out our weekly flyer and find plenty of great deals happening now.

1:14:02Jordan Harbinger:Save big money at Menards.