Episode 2
What is HONEY?
Judge Joe and I speculate on honey. Then Dr. Marina Caillaud from the Cornell Department of Entomology reviews, critiques, and sets the record straight.
Dr. Caillaud's Bees and Us FREE COURSE from Cornell University https://tinyurl.com/24vrh2lz
Transcript
What if I asked or I compelled you to explain something you really don't know about? Now, this is not often a position we find ourselves in, but I want you to stick with me here for a minute.
On today's episode, we're going to tackle honey.
Now, maybe you learned a little bit about honey at a younger age or you know something about how it works or you know, someone involved in honey production. Most of us turn out to be pretty clueless and would just look it up on our phone and, and say, yep, here's the answer.
But on speculations, guest to impress. We can't look anything up by design. The topic is actually chosen if it's something my guest and I don't know about.
And we speculate because that's all we've got. So on this episode, me and Judge Joe are going to hit record. We draft some quick notes and we try to explain honey. Again, no research is permitted.
And that's the show. And then we wrap it up when we bring in an expert to set us straight. Marina Caillou is lecturer at the Cornell Department of Entomology.
Yes, that's the study of insects. Marina flies in to let us know how Joe and I did and to inform us on how honey really works.
She also shares some links so you can learn more about honey after the episode if you are interested in taking it further. But first things first, I don't know what you know about honey, but let's give it a shot and see how we do. All right. Honey. What do you know about it?
Do you have any life science background or experience? Do you. Entomology, any. No, nothing whatsoever.
Speaker B:Nothing about honey or insects or anything like that.
Speaker A:When you drive into Trumansburg, New York, which is where we're from, we have a sign that says B City, usa. Have you ever seen this?
Speaker B:Where is that sign? Okay.
Speaker A:Yeah. So coming at you from B City, usa, Joe, let's do our five minute speculation and we'll come back and see how we do.
Speaker B:All right?
Speaker A:Okay, we're back. We've just taken our notes on honey again, another topic I've struggled with. How did you do I.
Speaker B:Again, as often as I have more questions than knowledge.
Speaker A:Do you mind if I take the lead?
Speaker B:No, go ahead.
Speaker A:Okay. My first question is, what is honey? What's the makeup of it? How is it? How is it created? This is my thinking. Bees drink or digest nectar from flowers.
Nectar or pollen or some kind of combination. I know that they do carry pollen and that's how pollination happens. There's A flower sex thing involved.
They draw the nectar from it and take it to the hive. Now, I don't know if honey is a post digestion thing or are they kind of squirreling it away, storing it, getting to the hive and spitting it out?
Speaker B:I don't know. I had all the same questions.
Speaker A:Is it post digestion? I'm really curious about that. Or are they squirreling it away, bringing it back? Do you have any notes on the makeup of honey?
Speaker B:I do. So I forgot about nectar, which makes a lot of sense because that probably has sugar in it. I'm not sure if pollen has sugar in it.
Speaker A:Don't know.
Speaker B:And so they collect pollen and nectar.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:On their wings. Do they, do they intake nectar? They must be. They must be drinking it, Right?
Speaker A:Well, they're, they're using their heads to, to, to go in the stuff.
Speaker B:So then they all go back to the hive.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And then is it. Do they add something to the nectar that they are creating? Maybe they have like, like mastication, like chewing on it or something.
Speaker A:Like a slime or. I don't know. Yeah.
Speaker B:Body. Do they have a gland that has the secrete? Something that creates honey out of the nectar and pollen?
If we're right about that being kind of the base, the foundation of it, which probably we are.
Speaker A:Okay, so they're bringing it back. They have built hexagonal structures. A hive. What's up with that? What's up with the hexagons?
Is it related to their eyes and the way that they see the world? Oh, my God.
Speaker B:I didn't even think of that. I don't know.
Speaker A:You know, in a movie you'd see bee vision or something like that. Hexagonal. I think if you zoned it on their eye or, you know, it observed it under micros. Okay. Anyway, there's, there's the hexagons.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:They build that out of.
Speaker B:Oh, I don't know.
Speaker A:What is that material?
Speaker B:Some other thing that they are creating? I don't. That. I don't know how they do that. And do they keep the honey in those little hexagonal quadrants? Right. When you see it?
When you see it ripped apart?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:The honey is like oozing out of it.
Speaker A:I think hives are just jam packed with it.
Speaker B:Why do they make so much? Do they eat it?
Speaker A:This is what I'm, this is what I'm wondering. So when they approach the flower and they draw the nectar from it or the pollen, is that nutrition for them? Is that what they're doing?
Or are they doing that solely to bring it back, turn it into honey. I think it's to feed larvae to continue to propagate the species.
Speaker B:The honey is like a superfood that's.
Speaker A:Super carbs that enables larvae to. To become a. A flying pea. Right. In relatively short amount of time.
Speaker B:Okay, that makes sense. And I had a thought that, you know, mammals have milk, which they don't even continue eating through that throughout their lives. Except for humans.
Right?
Speaker A:Yeah, we're pretty strange like that.
Speaker B:And does any other animal make food? I don't think so. And we're. I mean, I'm sure we're right about it being food because insects like sugar, they, you know, ants are always attracted to.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker B:So it must be food. And they seem to make tons of it.
But I get that there's lots of them in the hive, but you know, you can feed like 10 bears from the amount of honey they make.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it seems like they do. They're really good at it. They're. They're making this food for others or they all eating it.
Speaker A:So I was thinking about the roles of the bees. In the. In the hive, there's one queen, right. To rule them all.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:And the rest are drones.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Is that what we call them?
Speaker B:Workers?
Speaker A:Worker bees.
Speaker B:Oh, that's an.
Speaker A:I don't think the bee, I don't think the queen, unless I'm wrong, unless there's some kind of emergency ditch situation, leaves the hive, but rather resides in the hive and lays eggs.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Larva from that drone. Workers bring the pollen back, somehow turn it into honey in order to feed those larvae.
Speaker B:And that. And that it keeps going.
Speaker A:You've got to be right on that.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Are they loyal to just one queen or.
Speaker B:I think maybe.
Speaker A:Maybe if she were to die from disease or something like that, then a.
Speaker B:New queen, they have like a. Ready? A queen ready.
Speaker A:Okay. Are there other female bees or is the queen the only one?
Speaker B:I think there are.
Speaker A:Do they. Are they gendered? Gendered sex. Do they have a sex?
Speaker B:I think they must.
Speaker A:Do you think that there are male and female drones flying around?
Speaker B:Yes, I.
Speaker A:You think so?
Speaker B:I have no idea. I'm just.
Speaker A:Males and females. Do you think they can do it or no?
Speaker B:They must because they have.
Speaker A:They lay eggs, I think. Well, with fish, you know, the female lays the eggs and then the spermifies them.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:In the open water or whatever. Maybe there's something similar like this.
Speaker B:Insects. Do you know anything about insects?
Speaker A:I don't know how they propagate.
Speaker B:Okay. But I Know that if a queen dies, you're right. Then another will be another queen.
So there must be some bee that's ready and presumably like gendered female.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And then what is that? Just a, is that a bee that's so well treated, it just gets bigger or. I don't like why?
Speaker A:What is the queen bee bigger than a drone? I think so.
Speaker B:I think so.
Speaker A:I don't know. You have to have that egg laying capacity also.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:At what rate? I don't even know.
Speaker B:Back to honey, though. I had a thought.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:I've heard it's sterile. It's like a sterile environment.
Speaker A:Meaning you can store things within it.
Speaker B:Right. The bacteria will not grow in it. Oh, I don't know.
Speaker A:Sugar's a preservative, I think to some degree, I'm pretty sure. Right. You can make a fruitcake, for instance.
Speaker B:And have it, have it last for five years. So that makes sense. Right. And I think the, the makeup of it, the stickiness might help with that.
Like the actual chemical makeup, like bacteria can't move through it maybe.
Speaker A:I want to talk about humans and bees for a minute.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:You had talked about the, the seemingly copious amounts of honey that is produced within a hive. You can pull out a drawer.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:And you see, it's kind of the famous thing, Right. You see the guy running the flat blade on it across those hexagons, extracting, boom, put it back in. I've got my honey. The bees must be okay.
Are we taking surplus? Will they make as much? Will they just keep making it? I think they do.
Speaker B:I think they must because. And coming from the B capital of America or New York City, usa, I had the thought there are a lot of people who, who keep bees around here.
Speaker A:We have a big Apple industry and you know.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:A lot of agriculture and things like that that totally depend on this.
Speaker B:And I think those people would. Yeah, they would not. They'd go out of business if they were taking to, you know. Yes. I think the bees keep making it for them.
Speaker A:It's like it's, it's sustainable.
Speaker B:It's sustainable as long as, as long as they don't take too much. They must have to leave some of the honey for the, for the, for the larvae.
Speaker A:I don't know. Yeah, it's, it's animal derived. Vegans don't touch honey, for instance. Right. So I mean, one could say this is cruelty.
This is imposing human will on yet another species. We're taking as much as we want, but it's not like industrial Cattle farming. Right.
Speaker B:There's not that I know of. Industrial bee farms.
Speaker A:We don't kill the bees and we don't eat the bees.
Speaker B:That's true.
Speaker A:We just take. Take their saliva byproduct.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:All right, let's wrap this up. We don't really know exactly what honey is or how it's created. We presume that the why is to feed the young and feed the full grown bees.
Speaker B:We do think it comes from what they're collecting from flowers. It must be some combination.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, when you buy a jar of honey, sometimes it says buckwheat, sometimes it says wildflowers. Yes, this and that, which I don't even understand how that works out. Right. Do all the bees work on the same plants? Like. Nope, we're just only gonna.
Only buckwheat for us.
Speaker B:Maybe the bees know what each one smells like when they only have access to.
Speaker A:Okay, so we don't know exactly what it is. Could be saliva, could be a digestive byproduct. And maybe it could only be made within the hive because of some chemical or some kind of thing.
Maybe you can only make honey with hexagons.
Speaker B:And how much be. How much can each be make? We don't know. No, but an expert would know.
Speaker A:Yeah, we don't know a lot about the hives. Whether a human maintained hive is either more successful or not than one one in nature.
We don't really know about genders in bees, what the roles are, what happens.
Speaker B:Who'S making it, which bees are making.
Speaker A:It, how do they even recreate. Procreate.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:We don't know.
Speaker B:We know they have larvae, but we don't know.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think the prevailing theory, or maybe I steamrolled you on that one, was queen lays the eggs, the drones make honey, fertilize it or whatever.
Speaker B:Oh, the larvae. Yeah, that. I don't know. Eggs, but that sounds. Right. It sounds insecty. Final question. What is the nutritional value for humans of honey? I don't know.
Speaker A:It sure is awesome. It's incredible, right? Really, there's nothing like it in the world. You can get. Get a good carb sugar buzz from that.
Speaker B:Yeah. I wonder if there are other nutrients. Is there. Are there. Is there minerals in it?
Speaker A:All right. Why is it good for a sore throat or helps you maintain your larynx when you're a singer, you have a little honey tea, stuff like that. Yeah, it's.
It's got to be good for us. And in ways beyond the obvious, sugar.
Speaker B:Beyond what I assume is fructose Oh, I just thought of that. Like different types of sugar. Yeah, it must be fruit sugar, right? Yeah.
Speaker A:I felt like we made some progress on our own, but our experts obviously going to set us straight shortly, so we'll see how we do.
Speaker C:So it all starts with nectar.
Speaker A:This is Dr. Marina Caillou, who is lecturer at the Department of Entomology at Cornell's College of. Of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Thank God she's here.
Speaker C:The foragers do many trips per day, like 100 trips sometimes. And they are bringing that nectar to the hive. That nectar is stored in their stomach, which we call a honey crop, and it starts being processed.
The sugars that are in the nectar, and most of it is called sucrose, which is a disaccharide, I guess, fructose. Fructose is one of those monosaccharides they are processing. So mastication.
Speaker B:And it's only female bees. Did you say she?
Speaker C:Yeah, always.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C:Workers. It's a worker bee that does that.
Speaker A:All worker bees are females?
Speaker C:Absolutely. All of them.
Speaker A:Okay. We were running around with this term drones. Nothing to do with honey or what?
Speaker C:Nothing to do with honey. A drone in a colony is a male whose whole purpose is to hope that one day he will get lucky enough to mate with a queen in flight.
Definitely not a queen in his hive because he is the son of that queen. But drones, they go to those places and there are dozens of them, and they are waiting for a queen to fly by.
And if they are finding a queen, then they all are chasing her and trying to mate with her. And if they succeed in mating, they die immediately.
They don't process honey, they don't feed the babies, they don't make the wax that makes the hexagonal cells that we are all familiar with. Their whole job is really to mate with a queen.
Speaker A:So for the honeybees that have returned and regurgitated from the honey crop, the honey crop, is it in full form at that point?
Speaker C:No. So the forager returning is looking for house bees. Their job is to get the nectar from the incoming foragers.
So they are regurgitating by mouth to mouth transfer, which is called trophallaxis. They are regurgitating everything they have in their honey crop. That worker, then she is going to keep processing that honey.
Not only is she going to further break that complex sugar into two monosaccharides, the fructose and the glucose, but she's also having another enzyme which is going to break another molecule and turn it into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide.
Speaker B:We were wondering when we talked about wildflower versus other types of honey.
Speaker C:All right, let me get to that. But can I have a little bit more wine with a lot of ice cubes? Because I'm getting very hot.
Speaker A:Joe was guessing that or said he had read somewhere that honey is a preservative or it's impervious to bacteria.
Speaker C:Yeah, that was absolutely correct. You can find honey kept in fours that are, I don't know, 3,000 years old.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker C:And the honey is still pretty viable. Absolutely.
Speaker A:We've been talking a little bit about honey production in the wild and to some degree, commercial honey production. We had talked in our speculation about a classic image, the apiary guy or person pulling out a drawer and getting all the honey they want.
Will they meet a continual demand?
Speaker B:It's like if humans keep stealing it, will they keep making it? Because they have to.
Speaker A:They're going to power their own hive.
Speaker B:And if we keep taking it, are those bees more productive?
Speaker A:Will the bees scale up their operation to meet a perceived demand here or their own needs?
Speaker C:They will increase the production, yes.
Speaker B:Do they reassign bees from within the colony?
Speaker C:They are reacting to very simple cues. And the cues are mostly chemical based. We call them pheromones. And there are many types of pheromones.
There are also cues that are acoustic vibration. They can create vibrations with their wings, with their feet. Like, for instance, you know, how. How many workers did I bump into in the last hour?
That's the cue that tells you about the density of the colony.
Speaker A:On an industrial level, is this an exploitative or harmful practice? Ultimately, how do you think about this?
Speaker C:The industrial level is just one type of beekeeping. It's really, you know, when you get to more than 300 hives, we call them commercial beekeepers.
The USDA, United States Department of Agriculture distinguish three types of beekeepers in terms of scale of operation. You have the backyard hobbyist beekeeper that have, you know, like me, two hives, three, four, ten.
We, yeah, get some honey and we offer that to our friends. We don't sell the honey. Then the next level is what they call the sideliner. So those people typically have maybe 30, 40, 100 hives.
And it's kind of like a side business for them. They actually are having enough hives that they can extract enough honey to sell at the farmer's market, for instance, you know, make lip balm.
I mean, honestly, this is how bird's bees started.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C: , a thousand,: Speaker A:Can it be environmentally destructive?
Speaker C:The environment? No.
But for the bees, yeah, for the bees, no, it's not good because in order to make this a profitable business, they have to engage in practices that are actually not good for the bees. A lot of their business is coming from pollination services.
They are moving their hives on the side of crops and farmers are paying them for leaving their hives next to the crop. Those commercial beekeepers, they are moving them all across the country following the crop. It all starts with the elements in California.
Half of all the bees in the US are waken up in February and are asked to go to work. They are transported in huge trucks to California every February for the pollination of those almonds fields.
It's stressful for them to be transported. They are loading the hives, the full hives, they are taping the hives so that nobody gets out. Transportation can last maybe three days on a truck.
Then they are brought to different crops that have been heavily sprayed with pesticides. The other thing is that the bees from Florida are going to be in the same fields as the bees from Montana, California.
So anyway, this is the greatest place where you can exchange all the viruses and all the bacteria. It's bad.
If they are worried about those bees surviving the winter, they are giving them a sugary solution like high fructose corn syrup or even table sugar, you know, white sugar, sucrose. And that is not honey. So the industrialization of beekeeping is not good for honeybees and half of them in the US are subjected to that.
Speaker A:Marina Caillou, thank you so much for coming on speculations today.
Speaker B:It was a pleasure.
Speaker C:It was fun.
Speaker A:Okay. Judge Joe and I were in pretty dicey territory throughout. I thought we had some solid hunches.
You heard that we had several huge blind spots in our knowledge of honey. We don't even know how bees procreate. We don't know how they mate. We don't know how much honey they make, who does what.
The general gist of things seemed to escape us for some reason. However, our guest, Marina Caillou was terrific and we learned some hard lessons during our post speculation recording session.
She actually went for 35 minutes. We ultimately had to time box and edit her segment down. But we did drink some great French wine and had time tons of fun while we were at it.
So this business is settled. I hope we all learned something here, especially you, the listeners. If you have ideas for future topics.
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