Breeding Queen Bees. Melanie Margarita Kirby

It is with sadness and a broken heart that I dedicate today's episode to my brother-in-law Ramon.

He passed very suddenly on father's day.

My sister Linda began dating Ray as a teenager.

They were together 36 years.

Ramon was very passionate about equality for the minority, and he became involved in Chicano studies..

He loves nature.

And one of his favorite activities was being in the mountains of New Mexico, hiking, backpacking,

camping, watching the birds, anything with my sister.

Ramona and Linda were going to write a book of their adventures calling it, 'Is there a lake

around here?' As a teacher of electronics at the vocational school, he received a standing

ovation well-deserved by the way, on his last day of classes when he retired from teaching.

Loving nature and wanting to do his part as a steward, he and Linda landscaped

their backyard, where it is now a certified wildlife habitat, a gorgeous wildlife habitat.

Ramon and Linda researched local plants that would sustain pollinators of all types as

well as birds, bunnies, skunks, you name it.

The backyard is a safe refuge for all wildlife.

Ramon had a very warm heart and a lap for cats with his family.

He fostered many cats.

But kind of the funny part is he became a foster failure with Dora, short, for adorable, as

she became a permanent member of the family.

And she's a beautiful black cat..

Beautiful yellow green eyes.

One winter, not too long ago, there were three feral kittens that became buried during a snow storm.

Well, he dug them out and Linda and Ramon took them to Street Cat Hub where they were adopted.

He wanted the best for everybody in his life.

And he so much believe strongly in equal rights and democracy.

And he was a strong voice.

I learned a lot from him.

He was inspiring.

He believed society should take time to stop and smell the enchiladas..

And in today's episode, it's to stop and smell the flowers for the honey bees.

So there's so much of a wonderful connection that Ramon has with nature..

I'm going to miss Ramon so much, and I dedicate this wonderful episode on honey bees to Ramon..

RamonI love you dearly.

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Today's episode is part two, your positive imprint.

What's your PI?.

Conscientious beekeeping, sustainable beekeeping.

These are important words for guest Melanie Margarita Kirby member of Tortugas Pueblo in New Mexico.

Melanie has been all over the world, studying wildlife, especially honey bees.

Her studies landed her with Washington state university, where she is

finishing her studies in entomology.

Continuing her studies in sustainable beekeeping and honey bee research

she was awarded a Fulbright National Geographic scholarship where her research took her to Spain.

But unfortunately COVID changed her research trajectory and she had to return to the states.

Melanie is committed to having a hand in maintaining the world's honey bee population

through her research and conscientious queen bee

rearing.

Melanie Margarita Kirby it is so good to have you on the show.

Welcome.

Thank you so nice to be here.

It's so wonderful to

meet you

. Melanie Kirby: Bees , are needed and more

And it really starts first and foremost with habitat.

So we really need to build up and support and keep our Wildlands and our wild landscapes and even

our urban landscapes diverse and have a variety of blooms so that it can feed all the various

organisms that deserve to be on this planet

along with us.

Now I want to talk about your queen bees.

Zia queen bees.

The the symbol, the Zia symbol is, is very symbolic and important for us here in New Mexico.

, and its roots are with,a pueblo community the Zia tribe.

And so my interpretation of that is is slightly modified to, to better encompass, my work with these

because instead of it being a, a circle with four rays on each side, it's a hexagon with a bee in the middle.

But I, I definitely credit its roots with the Zia tribe and that's , their symbol

that's been borrowed for our state flag.

And the reason it's it's such a becoming symbol is because it's not only represents the sun, which we

get a lot of here in the high desert, but there's four rays on top and four rays on each side and

four rays on the bottom and each ray signifies a stage uh, the ones on top are four directions.

North, East, South, West.

The ones on one side are going to signify the a times of day, Dawn day, dusk and night.

The next four symbolize the, uh, the seasons spring, summer, winter, fall.

And then you have the final four, which symbolize the stages of life- so infancy,

adolescence, adulthood, and elder.

And so it's really a symbol that encompasses all of life, really which

is what, what I really like about it.

And that really resonates with me.

And, and with the cycle of the bees, they've been here long before us.

And my hope is that they'll be here long after us, too.

And the fact that they help to bring about these various cycles.

The bees navigate and find their food using the sun.

They're able to navigate between their home and where there's flowers that they can find food at.

They relay that to their sisters doing what's called a 'waggle dance'.

And so they navigate using that sun.

They also have their own biological, circadian and seasonal cycles.

Right?

So in the spring is when we tend to start thinking about pollinators and bees because

they're coming out and you can hear them.

And the flowers start to bloom and the bees are seizing that opportunity to not only get the food, they need.

The nectar serves as their carbohydrate in the pollen serves as their protein, but also

because it's part of this age, old choreography, this dance between plants and insects.

Plants wouldn't create a perfume or even create a nectar if they didn't need pollination, if

they weren't trying to entice another organism to help them with their own biological production.

And so it's really this beautiful choreography that happens between the

insects and the plants year after year.

And that's what, what gives us, all the various fruits and vegetables and nuts that we eat.

Right.

How that relates to my Queens, my queen breeding farm endeavor is that, as a seed saver, finding

those bees that are acclimated to different areas or that are adaptable to different zones and

then being able to nurture their own seasonal cycles and then to be able to share them with,

uh, other beekeepers in different places or within my region helps that story of continuity.

That's kind of where it taps back into my own, heritage

as an indigenous person that it's this worldview that we're all connected and this continuity.

It's a legacy that we have a responsibility to, to nurture whether it's passing on our stories

and traditions to the next generation and our youth, or whether it's caring for our land.

We also use another word here in New Mexico, 'carencia' which means to care and to really nurture something.

And so when we nurture the land, when we take care of the land, She can take care of us back.

Right.

And that really does start with soil and rebuilding soil, revitalizing soil, taking

care of our soil and then taking care of our waters and our air and our seeds.

So that then we can really nurture these cycles of growth and rebirth each season and

ultimately it's really so that we can eat.

Right.

So, so my efforts with queen bee rearing are really to, to just help food production and kind of tapping

back into my peace Corps experience, being exposed to different food systems and how different cultures

approach their own food system -that really is a broader picture that we don't always think

about, especially depending on where you're at, we think, well, I'll just go to the store and buy it.

Right.

But we don't tend to think, well, where did it come from and how did it get here?

How much energy went into producing it?

We've become really disconnected with where our food comes from and it comes from the earth.

So that means we're becoming disconnected from even the earth under our feet.

That Has it really impacted our, our understanding of our not only who we are, but our role, as humans

on this planet and the sooner that we can really reconnect with where our food comes from and all

the energy that went into producing it from the farmer to the, even the, the person who trucked

it there, but also to the actual life forces that gave that food it's life, down to the seed itself.

I think the more that we can reconnect with that, the more reverence that we will

have for the gift of life that, that it is.

It's just really such a gift.

Andy Friedrichs, you alluded to a little bit earlier with our discussion

with Norway, he'd mentioned the honey bees there , in Norway where he's at in the higher

forest that the flowers weren't coming back.

And he hadn't seen honey bees in a few years.

And so he wanted to bring them back.

And when he brought them back, then he started seeing now more plumage on trees, more flowers, uh, and so on.

I think it was just two hives.

But it was enough to sustain this area.

Everything you're saying is so important.

So let's talk about your, your queen bees a little more, you, you were

mentioning them and how you breed them.

How on earth do you breed a queen bee that the beehive, the rest of the bees will accept?

Yeah, it's it's a part of that biomimicry process that I mentioned and to keep

it sort of, uh, I guess, concise and explanation.

So I don't lose people too much with all the genetic jargon and even epigenetic jargon, which

I'll, I'll touch on that though, because I'm really fascinated with what we call epigenetics.

But uh, the colony will rear a queen under three circumstances.

The first is emergency.

The queen has died, she's gotten old.

She's, she's no longer there.

And so they know they need to queen.

The second is a supersedure.

So if a queen is Starting to what we call fail, meaning that she's running out of of

sperm to lay fertilized eggs or she's become ill then, uh, they may decide to replace her.

The third is swarming.

So when a colony is in its most ideal condition, meaning lots of resources are present- forage,

floral resources, their space is getting cramped they're building up in population,

then they want to reproduce on a colony level.

And so that's what a swarm is.

It's a reproduction on the colony level where the original queen, they will actually starve her for a

few days so that she loses enough weight to fly because when she's laying eggs, she's, she's too heavy to fly.

And so then a portion of the colony with the original queen will fly off.

And they'll have made some new what we call queen cells or cocoons that will then emerge out.

And these Virgin Queens will couple things.

They will fly out with a portion more of the colony.

These are called after swarms.

They will also, some of them will find each other and fight to the death because only one can remain.

And so swarming is the most ideal condition.

Emergency and supersedure are, they can rear the Queens in those conditions, but those

are definitely conditions what we call under duress when the bees are stressed, right.

But for swarming it's when conditions are great.

And so they want to reproduce on a colony level.

So I try to nurture that process.

And so instead of letting the bees swarm, which is like a cow, having a calf and then the calf

runs off, or the cow runs off and you're left with the calf I try to actually manage that swarm.

So when the bees are indicating that they're getting cramped for space and they start to rear

a bunch of what we call queen cells towards the bottom of their honeycomb then I can help them and

nurture that that natural process of reproduction.

So I do a thing called grafting, which is just transferring larva and, uh, there's Queens and workers.

There's one queen in each hive and then worker bees, which are her daughters and then drones,

which are the males, her sons -the workers are actually similar to the queen herself.

They come from fertilized eggs.

So they they have their mother's information and their father's information.

The drones on the other hand come from unfertilized eggs.

So they only have their mother's information.

So interestingly enough, within one hive family, because of a Virgin queen, when she goes out to mate,

she will mate with multiple drones from other hives.

Within one hive superorganism, there's what you call sub sister and super sister families.

And so some of the bees have the same mother and dad, other bees have the same mother, but

a different dad; just within the same hive.

And that's actually , the bees own natural way of 1.

Preventing and breeding 2.

, also developing what I like to call an overlapping network of health.

So it would be like, if, if all of us were in the same room and we only had one father, right,

and say that father had congenital heart disease, then we would all be predisposed to that condition.

Right.

But because as a society, we all have different fathers, but we're still a society right?

If one of, one of our fathers had that condition and it got passed on to us, then we might have

the, the ailment, but the rest of society could go on without us, if, if we succumb to it.

Right?

So the same within, uh, uh, a hive organism or what we call a superorganism, it's just one hive family.

There's actually a lot of different genetics within there.

And so this process of grafting is me just transferring the fertilized larva into special

little cups, which are the same shape and size as natural queen cells and putting them into a hive

what we call a nursery hive or a cell builder, which will then feed these developing larva, a

lot of Royal jelly and they will turn into Queens.

So that's the other really interesting aspect of queen production.

Any fertilized egg it's going to be a female and any single one of those has

the potential to turn into a queen bee.

The only thing that makes them a queen bee is the diet.

So all, all of the babies, whether they're male or female actually are an egg for

three days, and then they hatch from the egg.

And then the, what we call the nurse bees, the younger worker bees will feed

them Royal jelly for the first few days.

Royal jelly is like breast milk.

It's super concentrated vitamins and minerals and amino acids.

And after about the third day, though, then the diet changes to what we call Bee Bread

which is a mix between pollen and honey.

And so the males get, fed this bee bread and the worker bees get fed bee bread and only a

queen bee will continually be fed Royal jelly.

So if her diet changes, she'll become a worker bee, but if her diet stays the same, she'll become a queen bee.

And that's all just hive mechanics.

The hives themselves, the bees within them, the worker bees will decide

who's going to be a queen and who isn't.

When I do what's called grafting and I'm transferring larva I'm, I'm nurturing that process, but

I'm also selecting which larva I want to use.

So I like to select for longevity, which is what I call an umbrella trait.

Meaning that, over time, time basically selects the bees.

So if they're not going to be productive, then they're not going to make it.

If they don't stay gentle, then they're going to be replaced.

If they are not pest and disease resistant and they succumb to an ailment, they're not going to survive.

So I pick all of my breeder hives that are minimum two years old, because

then they've lived through two winters.

They've lived through a couple different dirts and spring buildups and they've remained healthy.

And so then I can go, oh, wow.

This one's still doing good after a couple of years.

I want to try and nurture that process of her creating more daughters.

And basically longevity by selecting for that trait.

It's it's, a heritable trait..

So when you select for it, you're basically passing those genes on to the next generation.

And that's where it taps into what I call epigenetics.

Not a term I, I made up it's it already exists, but epigenetics is basically that interaction

between the environment on on your genes, right?

So that then your genes are either turned on or turned off, but they learn and they adapt.

And so when we think about strong bees or strong hives that are healthy, it's actually

not just their own genes that are doing it.

It's the fact that they're in an environment that is nurturing that process.

And so again, we see that

sort of choreography between environment and the organism and how that basically

allows them to behave and survive.

Uh, okay.

Uh, this is, you have given so much.

No, you've given some incredible, explanations on because we always hear, about the Royal jelly.

We hear beekeepers talk about it, but they don't go into the in-depth because I, I

didn't know what types of questions to ask.

So this is extremely educational.

And so I do have a question regarding beekeepers and the queen bees.

Why is it and maybe I'm misinformed, but I hear that beekeepers sometimes

each year kill off their queen bee.

Is that false information?

Yeah, there are some people who do do that.

And sometimes it's because people think, well, if I have a younger queen, she's

going to be stronger and more productive.

There's really not I want to say a strong, scientific case for that being promoted constantly.

But we've all seen it with, uh, with other organisms as well as, as we age, we do slow down a little.

So that does happen with, with Queens and insects as well.

However a new queen each year is going to do well, but you don't know what her genetic

potential is if you're replacing her without really letting her live her life fully.

And so when you buy a queen that hasn't been selected for endurance then you get on that treadmill where

then you may have to constantly replace because the ones you have may not survive without it, right.

Without you replacing it.

I, on the other hand, want bees that can endure.

So I'm selecting off of the ones that can endure so that I know that when I'm sharing them with

people, these are bees that will last, under the right conditions should last a while.

And in nature, I mean, queen bees have been known to live for, up to eight,

10 years, but that was years ago.

And because humans have altered the environment so much, we're lucky if we get bees to live a few years.

Wow.

And that's actually in Europe and Europe, they, they find hives with Queens that are still five years old.

Here in the states it's very rare to find Queens that are several years old.

And in fact, the norm that you hear from commercial beekeepers coming out of California is that

queens only lasts them six months.

That's a travesty because it's really showing that there's, there's some sincere problems, that we're

either not selecting or nurturing strains that are naturally adaptive meaning that they might be producing

bees that they're having to constantly crutch, meaning constantly feed them or constantly medicate them.

And, it's, it's a quality of life thing then.

There's all different kinds of beekeepers, just like there's all different kinds of parents.

Right.

And some people do it really well and some people don't do it so well.

And so, when people are wanting to keep bees, , first and foremost, they should

connect with their local club or organization so that they can find some local mentors.

But I always really encourage people to find bees from a producer that's based near them

because then you're able to really ask them those questions like how did they produce them?

Do they give their bees medications.

If they are giving their bees medications what kind of medications?

Because if you're getting bees from an area that are constantly crutched and then you get them and

think, oh, I'm just gonna let them do their own thing you might just be setting them up to die.

So if you can start with bees that are naturally resilient and that are a good

match, it's just like plant zones and what we call 'land (inaudible) seeds, right?

We're not going to buy tropical plants and try and grow them here in the high desert.

They're, they're not going to live for very long because it's just not the right environment.

So the same is to be said for bees.

And the production methods- the way people produce them.

So just like fruit, if we pick fruit, when it's unripe and you ship it halfway around the world,

it's still going to be unripe when it gets there.

Right.

But if you can harvest at the right time when the fruit or the queen bee is mature, and she's what

we call a proven layer, she's laying properly, she's laying well, she's, she's seemingly healthy.

Then when you harvest her and share her with somebody else, then she'll have a better

opportunity to not only establish but to be accepted and to be accepted and endure.

Right.

So, there are some places, where people do think they've got to re-Queen every year.

I'm not one of those beekeepers, but there are some that do think that, and for whatever reason they

want just a young queen and only a young queen.

But I think there is something to be said about selecting for those

bees that are actually really adapted to an area and not know how to really endure over time.

Okay.

Well that answers the question.

And then we mentioned the almond orchards in California, where beekeepers will travel, hundreds and

hundreds of miles with their beehives to pollinate.

So why do they have to do that?

Aren't there enough bees in California where they'll go to the orchards or are we that much

in dire straights where our natural bees that are just living wherever , are not enough to

pollinate the needs of society and our food supply.

That's a great question.

There aren't enough honey bee colonies there.

Oh my gosh.

I was hoping you would not say that...

which is why a lot of beekeepers take their bees there

because they know there's a need for it.

But the reason for that need has been because when we have these large tracks of monoculture,

which a thousand miles of the almonds, it has become, it's monoculture, meaning one crop, right?

Then, , when it's in bloom, it's amazing.

But once it's out of bloom, it becomes a food desert and there's no other bloom

available to sustain even the bees.

So even the honey bees that are trucked in then have to be trucked out because that's not enough bloom for them

to put away enough reserves to last the whole year on.

Right.

And so when we think of these other varying pollinator species as well, if they don't have

additional types of food to live on at other times of the year, they can't survive there either.

So there's been actually some great and wonderful efforts by various organizations to help change that.

And to work with orchard owners to start putting in what we call hedge rows or cover crops or

various pollinator friendly plants around their orchards and even now throughout their orchards

so that there's a diversity of nutrition, right.

Because nobody wants to just eat white bread alone.

That's not very nutritious.

So even bees that they only have one kind of pollen, only one kind of nectar

unless they're a specialist, right.

That's totally different because they've evolved to just survive off of that kind.

But when they're generalists, they need a diversity of nutrition.

And that only comes from having a diversity of blooms.

So, there are some organizations that are really working hard and have made some great

strides, I'd say over the past 10 years.

And even 15 years in trying to work with, uh, farmers to create additional pollinator-friendly

habitat sites on their properties

so that our dependence on this one, bee and from coming from so far away can be lessened, right?

So that we can quit exploiting this one sole organism and also help promote all these other various

pollinator species that have just as much right.

They deserve to live here too.

Right.

Absolutely.

Oh, that was a great explanation.

And so is a butterfly, a general pollinator or

specialist?

It depends.

I'm not super nuanced in, I just was curious uh, Situation.

However, there are some that that might be specialists.

Like I know there's moths particular moths and orchids that are very specialist that code linked together.

But I do, I have seen butterflies on different kinds of flowers, then you have the monarchs who are really

attuned to milkweeds and different kinds of flowers.

So, I think you have both, but don't quote me on that.

, in general, just need more habitat.

We need more flowers and we need them through the varying seasons, not just in spring.

We need some that are available in the summer and some that are available in the fall.

Right.

And for places where people live Where they still have bloom in the, in what we consider to be winter

that, that, that there's something available.

Sure.

Trees, flowers are really good because it's something we can actively do, but trees are even better because

they take roots and they survive year after year.

Right.

Santa Fe is developing a larger Santa Fe pollinator trail with the Xerxes society,

which is a wonderful organization that works a lot for invertebrate conservation.

I think Santa Fe is working towards becoming what they call a bee city USA, which is basically the city, uh,

city magistrates actually verbally and formally declare declare their city as a pollinator friendly site.

And so there's efforts between the department of transportation and the housing authority and

building and zoning and all this stuff to really incorporate more pollinator friendly strips, whether

it's on medians, parking lots and things like that.

So, there's some really cool programs out there.

There's bee friendly farming.

There's even bee campus USA.

There's a lot of different groups that are doing some wonderful work to help promote all

different kinds of pollinators and predominantly pollinator habitat cause that's where it starts.

If we have the habitat, it's like the field of dreams, right.

If you build it, they will come.

So if we can, have these spaces with flowers The pollinators will come, which

means that you listeners, would need to do a little bit of research as to what flowers are

going to grow or what trees will grow in your area.

That is something that obviously Melanie Kirby promotes as well as if you remember Andy Friedrichs.

That's one of his educational tools is to get people to grow the habitat for the pollinators in their area.

Melanie, you have been so enlightening as well as inspiring.

I so much enjoyed this.

So yeah, you hit upon a lot.

And I ask this of all my guests.

Is there anything that you didn't get to talk about that you really want to talk about?

Well I did talk about a lot.

And thank you so much for, for taking that little sort of magic carpet ride

with me over all these different topics.

Which does bring me to, one last thought, which is, how one of the smallest of beasts, really is so paramount

and poignant in our, not only our survival, but in our, in our planet's pertuberance, so to speak.

And so it's really amazing to me how cool bees have connected me to various aspects

of, of life, everything from food systems, to science, to education and research, to farming.

And I just mentioned, I have a little art installation, so I mean, I'm even using

my collaborative artworks with my bees.

They built some honeycomb and some cool glass heads which I have on display here in downtown Taos.

And I think that that's it.

Anything that we really find inspiring for us can really connect us to the broader world.

And I'm so, so glad and honored that you that you asked me to, to share my story and, and

my thoughts on bees with everybody, I really hope that it does inspire other people and

that you can really make your positive imprint.

I would just really like to encourage folks to take time, to stop and smell the flowers and to plant

more flowers and to to really work with each other and with their local communities to provide space

and forage for all of our pollinator friends.

Melanie margarita Kirby.

Thank you so much for sharing all that you have learned with us here at your positive imprint.

Thank you, Catherine.

This is great.

You're welcome.

Well, everybody plant!

Yeah.

Your positive imprint.