Exploring Sustainable Beekeeping: Varroa Mite Resistance and Native Bee Diversity

The following interview was recorded for the Poor Proles Almanac podcast with guest Dr. John Kefuss, joining us all the way from France to discuss lessons learned over a half-century of beekeeping. John's dedicated the past 30 years to treatment-free beekeeping and we talk extensively about mite management. John has stewarded honeybees across the globe and has some really interesting insights about the future of beekeeping.

Andy:

John, thanks so much for coming on. Please introduce yourself.

Dr. John Kefuss:

Okay, my name is John Kiefus. I'm originally from the United States. I was born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, lived in Ohio, worked in the West, and also lived down in Texas with bees. Then, I went to New York to get my PhD under Dr. Rothenbuehler in Oberwiesel, Germany. After that, I moved down to southern France to start Rurin Queens. That's what I've been doing.

Andy:

Awesome, you were in South America for a little while, right?

Dr. John Kefuss:

Yeah, I have the operation Pacific Queens in South America. My partner is going to finish buying me out next year, so that means that I still own part of it. But we specialize in the pollination of avocados. My part on it was rearing queens and pollen production. We did some genetic selection on bees for pollen production, and because we shipped frozen pollen to Europe for bumblebee production—oh, awesome—some years, we'd ship out about nine tons of pollen.

Andy:

Oh wow. I'm not super familiar with bumblebee feeding. Are people breeding bumblebees, and what for exactly?

Dr. John Kefuss:

Yes, people do breed bumblebees for pollination in greenhouses. You can buy them in boxes and put the boxes in the greenhouse, and then they'll pollinate for you. You don't need that many bumblebees for pollination, but they're very efficient.

Andy:

Yeah, their colonies are only what a couple hundred bees usually, Something like that. The reason I wanted to have you on is you've got this really diverse history that you have been in a lot of different places, you've worked a lot of things, you've seen, and you've been around beekeeping for decades.

Dr. John Kefuss:

I'd say a little bit more than decades, about 50 years. I started keeping bees when I was 11 years old. Now I'm just a young 79. Oh wow, so I can give you an idea of how long I've been keeping bees. I got into keeping bees because I like to eat honey, and when I was young, I didn't have the money to buy honey, so I thought, well, if I had some bees, I could have all the honey to eat, which turned out to be true.

Andy:

And you're not sick of it yet.

Dr. John Kefuss:

No, no, no, I like to eat the honey.

Andy:

You've seen a lot of change in the beekeeping industry. All right, so the first thing I want to ask is if you've been treatment-free with your bees since 1998. Yeah, what was it about the 90s that you said? You know what? I don't want to do this anymore.

Dr. John Kefuss:

Yeah, Well, it's quite simple. We helped develop some of the first products for treating varroa mites in the early 90s with the veterinary school here in Toulouse and some other commercial beekeepers. And the problem is, when you do a treatment, it's a question of dosage. On low dosages, you don't have much impact, but on a higher dosage, you can. And so I realized at the time that we were doing these tests that I really didn't wish to follow the bit about treating the colonies. In addition, one of the reasons that I later stopped treating was that I started to get headaches when I treated the colonies. At that time, we'd have to fumigate the colonies, and we'd spray the fumes and vapors inside the colony, usually during the wintertime, and about eight minutes or so for a colony.

After those treatments, I had the impression that I had a bad headache. But I thought, well, it was just psychological because I knew I was working with a chemical product, and so I figured, well, maybe it's just my imagination. But then I went to a few bee meetings and bee inspector meetings because I was a bee inspector at that time, and the other inspector told me he said yeah, I just finished treating my colonies, and it's just like somebody hit me in the head with an iron bar and I said, well, that sounds familiar.

Then, later on in the meeting, somebody else said yeah, I treated and had some headaches and things like that. And so then I decided, and then I thought, well, maybe what I thought was a psychological headache was actually a real headache. So it was a psychological headache; it was actually a real headache. And so then I decided, well if I have to change my brain, how much am I going to have to dish out to buy a new brain? Well, it turns out that at that time, there was nobody selling brains except the Russians. This is an old joke and they used to sell it by the kilo. A doctor's brain would cost a couple of hundred rubels; an engineer's a few more rubels. But the most expensive brains were beekeepers' brains. That was because they had to get a lot of beekeepers together to get one killer of brains.

And so, anyhow, I decided, since I knew I could not buy a new brain, I thought, well, what are the alternatives? One of the alternatives is to, as a queen breeder, I knew that if I stopped treating, I was going to lose some colonies, and I figured if I had a 10% survival rate. At that time, I was running 400 colonies in France. With a 10% survival rate, I could do a breeding program, and after three years, I lost about two-thirds of my colonies, so I had three times 30% survival. Colonies were not very nice looking and all that, but I was able to start a genetic program. It had actually more colonies than what I needed for the selection program. So I started off with that and then just stopped treating and continued on.

The process is quite simple: you eliminate those colonies that have high mite populations, and you replace them with queens from colonies that have low mite populations and are good honey producers. One of the mistakes you don't wish to make is to requeen your colonies with colonies that are not good honey producers, because as a beekeeper, from my standpoint, you need to have honey also to survive. As a beekeeper, from my standpoint, you need to have honey also to survive, so you can, and so you take your best colonies that show the highest mite resistance and select from them. That way, even if you don't get mite resistance, you still get good honey-producing colonies. So you limit your damage, and this is something that most beekeepers need to do because nobody can really afford to lose a lot of colonies.

As a commercial queen breeder, I knew that if I lost all my colonies, I could buy new packaged bees from Italy, and if I lost some of my colonies, I could buy new packaged bees from Italy and get started in queen rearing very quickly.

But not everyone has that same possibility. Also, earlier, when I was studying, I did my entomology degree at Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, and there I had the chance to, during my summer, my summer vacations, work at the lab of Walter C Rothengler, who was the one who studied hygienic behavior in bees and found the genetic links to it. And so I know that one of my jobs was counting scales of American foulbrood. Very interesting, you know, and so I knew that these could be selected for disease resistance. For instance, in the case of American foulbrood, we had one line of bees, the brown line, and the bent square line that you put in five cells of American foulbrood, and they'd come down and die out. We had another line of bees, called the brown line, that you put in a whole frame of foulbrood, and they'd clean it out, and the following day, they'd be laying there.

Andy:

Oh, wow.

Dr. John Kefuss:

What's interesting about the Brown Line is it was originally developed by a man who milled down combs of beeswax from other beekeepers, and so whenever he'd need a frame, he'd need a comb for his colonies. He'd go out to his pile of rocks and frames and pick out something and just put it in his colonies, and so he was actually doing a preliminary selection for American foul-brewed resistance. People sometimes do things that they're selecting, and they don't know they're doing it, but they're doing it, yeah, and the main thing is they get results.

Andy:

In this process? Are you concerned at all about like a genetic bottleneck?

Dr. John Kefuss:

No, because we're doing open mating, so our bees are mating also with our neighbors’ bees, and so that's bringing us in some genetic variability, and, like I say, we're just trying to select out the best bees from what we have. And I had one beekeeper, Mr Osi. He's dead now. He wasn't too far from me, and he said that with his Amitraz strips, he could get about five or six years of use out of his strips. He could get about five or six years of use out of his trips because he said every year he'd just go and scratch them down to clean off the surface and put him back in the colonies. Sometimes they'd only use a fourth of a strip.

I think what was happening was that his queens were playing around with our drones, and we thought that they were getting resistance. He was getting resistance probably in from our colonies. But what's important for him was that he was happy with his technique for controlling Varroa, and he said he didn't have any problems with Varroa, and so that's what counted for him, whether it was that that was being effective or not because normally they say that average-add scripts, you don't use them for that long and that they fade out. But anyhow, there are different possibilities that you can have.

Andy:

Yeah, it's awesome.

Dr. John Kefuss:

And what's good is that one of the problems. When we're selecting, we need mites. We can't select without mites, so it's good to have neighbors around that have nice mite populations because that brings us in mites to put mite pressure on our colonies. I just did, and I find it here. We just did some testing of some of my neighbor's counties. One of the neighbors treats with mites, and you can't see it; it's too small, but he is running about 13-21% mite infestations in on his bees, and at the same time, we're running about 3.7% percent mite infestation.

We're not that little, far from him, and so he's probably our main finisher of varroa mites. Well, you know, I saw a friend of mine, Steve Taber lived, used to live by me here and uh out to farm there, and when he was in the states, he was testing for American foulbrood resistance, and one of his problems was to get enough American foulbrood infestation in the counties to have them come down with foulbrood.

When you're not trying to do it, you seem to get the disease quite easily. But when you're trying to study the diseases, and sometimes you find it's pretty difficult to get your counties infected, or they get infected with something that you don't wish them to get infected with. And so there are two sides, those that when you're doing the selection, you need the mites, you need that pressure, you also need the honey production to, like I say, select for counties that have high honey production and low mite production, and possible to do it, it's just a matter of taking time, and you have to be able to count to five. When you have more than five mites in a colony, then it's time to change out that queen.

Most of the beekeepers I've met have been able to count to five, and if they haven't, they didn't let me know.

Andy:

You're referring to this concept of bond testing, right? And that's something you came up with, right?

Dr. John Kefuss:

Yes, actually, it was Wolfgang Witter from Fabric Germany who worked together with and did some of the original testing on bees. The Germans had a research project in, I think it was in Tunisia, in Sejnan, where they were helping farmers, and farmers had cows, goats, and bees, and so when the varroa mites came through, of course, that had a lot of damage on the colonies there, and so a lot of colonies were killed out. But then, some colonies survived and were still producing honey. And so Wolfgang's question was is this genetic or just due to the location effect? And so he sent me some of his queens, and also control queens were sent to me from Germany.

We tested them out at one of my bee locations, and it turned out that the bees from Tunisia were a genetic effector. But what was also interesting was that some of the Karnica lines also showed good genetics against mites, and actually, the final survivor in that experiment was the Karnica bees. This indicated to me that there was a genetic possibility of selection, and it was for that reason in about 1998, 97, and 98, I decided to stop all treatments because I couldn't buy a new brain. And even if I could buy a new brain, I'm not sure I'd have the money to pay for one that I'd need.

Andy:

Could you describe this concept of bond testing for folks who have never heard the term?

Dr. John Kefuss:

Well, it goes to the slogan of that bond live and let die. In other words, you don't do anything, and you just wait. This is the most difficult part of the test. You have to wait. A lot of people are not patient; they're afraid to wait, but usually, it takes you about three years. Why three years? Because in first year, you're going to have your mite populations build up. The second year, you're going to start to have an impact on those mites, on those colonies, and you're going to start having colonies that die out. By that time, the colonies that are surviving will be producing drones so that in the third year, you have a lot more drone production of drones that probably show resistance to mites.

Then it's a matter of just going through, and I think any beekeeper can tell you what is his best colony. They can also probably tell you what is also his worst colony. So if you go through and requeen from your best colonies and then you just requeen those colonies with your worst colonies, with virgins from those queens, and let them open, mate, and continue like that, it's what I call a no-brainer. But the problem is you have to be patient, and a lot of beekeepers aren't patient.

I remember reading an article recently from Danny Weaver. I worked at Weaver's Apiaries in Navasota, Texas. That's actually where I learned about the real queens; they said they were running about 3,000 colonies at that time, and so they decided not to treat 1,000 of those 3,000, and all the colonies of those 1,000 died except for nine. Now that's having a big economic impact. That's a good bond test. And then you just read from those, and now they're running, uh, 3,000 colonies that they don't treat. That's amazing. The problem is to locate your genetic material and incorporate it into your bees.

Andy:

When you're talking about genetic material, how important is the bee type that you're choosing to uh that success? Do you think like specific, like, are Italians particularly good or bad for this, or is it completely based on place and, ideally, getting local bees that maybe are?

Dr. John Kefuss:

The best thing is to choose a bee that you like to work with. It doesn't matter what the base is. We tested our bees at the Inji and Exilisavia on the island, and they had different lines of bees. There, they had Buckfast and Caucasians, and some of the lines showed quite good resistance. Turns out, our bees were the final survivors of that experiment.

You can find good genetics in different bee races and things like that. You just have to learn. I think it's often good to work with a locally adapted bee because if you have dry desert conditions, then you should work with a bee that's adjusted to those conditions. If you're working more with a bee in a humid area, such as in Germany or things like that, maybe it's better to work. The only thing you have to do is sit down and look. A lot of people say I don't have the time, but they need to take the time.

Andy:

I'm really interested. You pointed out this study or this bond test, basically in Texas, where they had 90-something percent die off versus what you had, it would be more than 90 percent because 95, somewhere nine counties surviving out of a thousand, so one percent survived, right?

Versus what you had, that about seven sound, about 70 percent died. Do you think, because of the fact that we're kind of kicking the can down the road with all these new chemical introductions because things aren't working anymore, we're going to make that loss bigger and bigger because the varroa mites are just becoming stronger and stronger or is that?

Dr. John Kefuss:

It is just a worst-case scenario. We did some research work that's been published. In the training you can read mites for higher, high resistance to low resistance to the chemicals. So it's in the genetics of the mites also, and so when you're treating with chemicals, you're actually breeding mites for resistance to those chemicals. If you're not treating your mites, there's no selection for or against the chemicals, and so, actually, the situation is more complicated than what most people realize. But you have to think of the bees’ side, you need to think of the mite side, and so, like I say, it's more complicated.

Now, one of the things that we've done is we came up with the soft bond test. I don't know if you heard about that or not. Yes, essentially, what you do is do a bond test, choose your best colonies, and then, so that's your highest honey production and mite resistance, and then you treat everything else. That way, you have even less damage than if you would treat everything with chemicals because you're going to have chemical damage. We'd have chemical damage on breeder queens, but in that way, you can limit your losses, and it takes a longer time to do it. But for those that are hooked on chemicals and psychologically for them, this is probably the best way for them to go, and that probably makes the best way for them to go.

Andy:

And that probably makes more sense for a backyard beekeeper, too, because you'll have smaller losses.

Dr. John Kefuss:

It makes more sense and maybe more dollars. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah. Of course, when people visit me, I always pay them one cent for every mite they find in my colonies there. So I have a pile of 50-penny bundles. When people come in to find a mite, I'll always pay them hard cash, and you can tell it's hard because you bite it with your teeth. You're going to break your teeth.

Andy:

Man, it's so cool to see that there are so many different ways that we can tackle this issue. I'd listen to someone talk about this idea of pulling the drones out of your hive or the drone cells out of your hive because the mites would come in from the furthest out comb as a way to basically try to reduce the population. But it doesn't really address that fundamental issue of, like, building that resistance, and I think what you're doing actually does. And what I also really appreciate about the bond testing or soft bond is that the idea isn't like some delusional idea that somehow we're going to get rid of all of the mites, like the mites are there.

They're here to stay. We need to just help our bees learn to co-evolve with them and not do that. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this book. It came out probably five years ago called the Comfort Crisis, and it was basically about how humans have become too comfortable and our bodies are not designed to be comfortable all the time, and that's causing health problems. And I feel like we've done that to our livestock, whether it's bees or sheep or cattle or whatever, and we're starting to see a lot of pushback with these natural methods.

But people don't, I think, fully grasp that sometimes. So I'm thinking about my own local beekeeping association and, like, I can't talk about being a natural beekeeper because the venom that comes out from people saying, like you're, you're causing all these problems, you're the reason that, like, we have all these mites when it's like, oh, this is a bigger issue than you know having a chemical regimen, so, like, with that in mind, how's the feedback been from your local beekeeping community, maybe even when you started, versus today?

Dr. John Kefuss:

Well, when I started, I actually was short of mites, and so I put advertisements in the bee journals to buy mites. And about 15 years later, I was talking with Fernandez from the health bee health service, and I told him. I said that I put out all the two years of advertisements in the two different bee journals, and nobody had any mites for sale. I thought it would be quite easy. I was wishing to buy mites in groups of 100. Mites are are easy to ship, you can send them on a little bit of solution and that, so they can have some humidity and they're not difficult to ship and all that. So I thought, good, I could get all the mites I need. But nobody had any mites for sale.

Only two people answered me. One said sorry, John, but I just treated all my colonies, and the second one said you can come here and collect all the mites that you wish, but for me, that would be too expensive. But my idea was just too; since everyone had all these mites, they could just shake off a few mites for me and send them to me, and I'd pay them for them. But later on, as I said, about 15 years after those advertisements, I was talking with the person in charge of health. He said when you put in your advertisements, we got a lot of people asking us what Kefuss was trying to do because when somebody's an American in France buying mites, well, it raises up suspicions, you know, and so, I found out about that, later on.

Like I say, the people who treat are actually helping to build up your mite populations because they're making the mites more resistant. But I don't worry about people treating me because they're furnishing me mites. My colleagues kill those mites, whether they are chemically resistant or not; that makes no difference to me. The main thing is that my bees can eliminate those mites how they do it. That's something else.

Andy:

I heard you define your bees as the black hole, and I really like that.

Dr. John Kefuss:

It was a good description. Oh yeah, the thing is that the mites go in, but they don't come out. But you don't know why they come out. Well, actually, you're starting to get a little bit of an idea of why they don't come out. In one of the cases, mites need a certain chemical called ectisone, and apparently, our bees do not produce that specific type of ectisone that the mites need, and so they can't survive or don't survive so well. It's just like you have an old car, and if you don't put gas in the car, you're not going to go anyplace.

Actually, genetic work is just like I go to the old car and I'll see. I have a Toyota truck from 1980. It works quite well. Keep in good. If you, if the tires are fat, you're not going to advance. If the pistons, uh, broken, uh, you're not going to advance so fast. I know because that's six pistons in one year; I broke one this is six pistons, and it was still going around, but it was smoking too much, and I decided to redo the motor and so anything that can cause a breakdown for the mite whether it's in, it's getting the type of food it needs, or the different conditions, or anything that are all these things add up and help reduce mite populations, and what might be causing resistance in my colonies may not be the same thing that causes resistance in other colonies, and I think this is good because it gives you a large variety of things to select from and you're not to. Mites are always going to be like a hula dancer. They want to always try to adapt to your bees, but you need to find things that are different so they can't adapt. And the more things you have, the better.

And I say that where people could really make progress, especially in beekeeping associations, is that a beekeeper, whether it has one or a hundred or thousand colonies, chooses out his best colonies. Well, if you have only one, then it's easy to choose your best colony and you group those together in a county or group daughters together from those colonies in an area and then see which ones have the best resistance. That way, you're spreading your testing out. It sucks. Now we're a very large area, and it's a much more durable selection. It's not that difficult to do. It's not that difficult to do.

This would be a good organizational project for beekeeping associations to have a raw selection bee yard where people bring in their best what they think is a good genetic material, and they put it to the test and see what happens. I like that. If they see that the colonies are going to die out, then they can pull them out from the experiment and requeen them or treat them or do whatever they wish, but at least to test them, and they have a zone where, when they know they're going to go in there, they're going to be hit with raw and so then they can test it. It could be the beekeeper that only has one colony of bees that has the most mite-resistant colonies, and it's not according to the size of the beekeeper that's important, but it's according to how they've handled their bees and how their bees have been exposed to the mites and things like that.

Yeah, let's say, like I say, it's a process that takes time, and you have to take time to do things correctly. If you try to go too fast, then you're going to lose time in the long run.

Andy:

Do you feel like you're starting to see more treatment-free beekeepers around you because of your example?

Dr. John Kefuss:

Oh, yes, I just had a group come in from the Czech Republic. They heard me talk in the Czech Republic in 2011. And after that, then they start to select, and they've got some of their lines of bees that are starting to show resistance, and so actually, they came here in August to learn a little bit more on how I test, and so I profited to test about 90 colonies of bees and had them go in and took out, showed them how to do the sampling and do the testing and that, and it's not difficult to do, and now they know how to do it, and they see that there are results to do, and now they know how to do it, and they see that there are results.

Now, as I understand it, others have asked them to demonstrate to some of the other beekeepers the techniques they learned at my place. That way, others can select, and the more people you get at selecting, the better.

The decision is to show the economics. If you got bees that don't need to be treated, you're going to have an economically more viable economic situation than counties that need to be treated because if you treat only once a year during that, during that year interval, you're going to have your mite populations build up and negatively affect those colonies and, whether you see it or not, you're going to have lower production. And so if those colonies don't need to be treated, then you're not going to have that unseen, let's say, mite damage during the buildup phase, and so I think it's just a matter of time. I said at one time it'd take about 30 years before people actively start treating for mites. I think that was about 20 years or so ago. So things are progressing at the rate that I predicted years ago, so things are progressing at the rate that I predicted, and as we see more people having bees that they don't need to treat, then it's going to go through.

One thing I know about beekeepers is beekeepers don't like to waste money. They don't have money to waste, yeah, and, like I said, I know how that is, and so anything you can do to help the beekeepers save money, then it's good. Now, one person that's starting to have probably a little bit of impact in the States now is Randy Oliver from California. You're probably familiar with him. He actually visited us and saw what we were doing. He came to France to talk to the French Queen Breeders Association, and so then I drove him down from the meeting and then drove him to Montpellier and then down to my place, and so we had plenty of time to talk, and at the beginning, he wasn't too hot on selecting for my resistance, but now I think he's starting to convert.

So,, of course,, these are the type of people you wish to have out there because Randy does a lot of good writing, does a lot, backs up his comments, and comments with data, which is what I like to do. When I make a comment, I like to have the data to back it up. If I don't have the data, then I don't make the comment because my mother said that if you assume something, you have to be careful because she said the word assume can be divided into three different words. Yep, one of three letters, one of one letter, and one of two letters. This is from my mother.

Andy:

So what are you seeing right now for survival rates on your hives? Like overwintering.

Dr. John Kefuss:

We're running about the same survival rates as other beekeepers in good years. We have about the same survival rates in bad years. It also depends on the colonies what we've been doing, and how much I've been playing with my colonies. If I play around with my two colonies too much before going into the winter their survival rates are going to go down. But we're running about what used to be really survival rates, before the mites were there was about 5% or so.

That was about like in the States, and now their survival rates are going down to 5%. That's not 5% survival but 5% mortality. That's the difference. So now mortality rates are going about 20%, sometimes 30% or 40%. But here in France, you have to think about one thing. We have another problem, which is probably getting to be even more important than the varroa mites, and that's the hornets.

And I was out today looking at one of my sons' hives at the honey house there, looking at one of my sons' hives at the honey house there, and he had a colony of bees there and about 50 or 60 hornets there that are attacking that colony all the time. Now, bees are out defending at the entrance, but those hornets will fly in and pick off a bee and fly off. When you have 50 or 60 hornets in front of a colony, that colony is not going to be lasting very long. I put up some boards and things in front of that to block off the hornets and then made a hornet trap with just a simple plastic bucket with a wire screen over the top. You press the wire screen down and put a hole in the middle about the size of a hornet. On the inside of that, can you put honey cappings and things like that?

I push in a few hornets to make a little bit of buzz activity there, and some days in other years, I've got about 500 hornets a day. And so when you have that type of pressure on your colonies, that's not good, especially since they're killing off the vera mites also. They're probably eating those mites as they. I think they eat mainly the thoraxes and things like that, so varroa mites are a problem, but here in Venice, it's not the main problem. The main problem now is the hornets.

Andy:

Are those hornets an invasive species, or are they just opportunists right now?

Dr. John Kefuss:

These are hornets that came in from Asia, and at the time, they came in from pottery from China. At the time when they came in, the French government said they didn't have the money to kill off those hornets, and so those hornets then spread from a region around Bordeaux, then all out over France and different places, and now they're costing probably millions of dollars to beekeepers. If it was confined, then they could have been stopped, but the politicians say we don't have the money. We don't have the money, but you're going to have problems later on. Same thing with the giant hornet that came into the States. I hope that the States are doing a good job of trying to knock that out because otherwise, it's better for them.

Andy:

I haven't heard much about it, so I'm hoping that means that it's been under control, but it could just be under the radar.

Dr. John Kefuss:

Yeah, what I always suggest is that on hornets like that, they should put a bounty on the hornets. I had a friend of mine from Syria that said in Syria they put a bounty on hornets when you bring in a hornet queen, and you get so much money, and then the hornet population drops, and so they stop giving out the hornets premiums, and then after that the hornet population increased again. If you have hundreds of people that can go out and bring in criminals get paid for them. Why not pay people to bring in hornets, or not even to bring in hornets, just localize the nest and say there's a nest there and then it can be treated and taken care of. That's the cheapest way in the long run.

So people that there's a financial interest in locating those nests and that's even a more important financial interest for the beekeepers that those nests are located, but there's going to probably be other problems come in and all of a sudden. But in beekeeping, the main thing you have to do is to be able to adapt. If you can't adapt, then you're going to run into problems. Yeah, but beekeeping, the main thing you have to do is to be able to adapt. If you can't adapt, then you're going to run into problems.

Andy:

Yeah, now there's one fundamental issue or situation that's different between where you are in France and here in the United States, and I think that's around the fact that honeybees are not native to North America, or at least not in the last 10,000 years.

Dr. John Kefuss:

I think they were there before that.

Andy:

Yeah, before the Ice Age, I believe they found some evidence of Apis mellifera out in Nevada, but it's not very closely related to any of the honeybees that exist today. But this raises a really interesting point. That we are struggling here in the US is that we have these massive, you know, apiaries that go into like almond fields and there's a lot of debate about whether or not honeybees are damaging native pollinators. And I'm really interested in your thoughts, as somebody who's been around this industry for as long as you have, about whether or not beekeeping needs to change to support some of these native pollinators or if maybe the issue is overblown. I'm really interested to know kind of your thoughts on, you know, whether or not we should be doing something different.

Dr. John Kefuss:

Okay, I had the chance when I worked for the USDA. I worked out in Logan, ute, at the wild bee lab, bohart, and we were working with Osmia and Megacallia and all that. I was working with honeybees, but everyone else is working with wild bees and I think what needs to be done is that areas need to be planted also for wild bees. This is one of the problems for wild bees; they need certain pollen and nectar resources, and if they don't have those at the correct time of the year, then they run into a problem. I've really never been too much worried about competition between wild bees and honeybees. There might be some competition, but I think if there are enough diverse types of forage, but I think if there are enough diverse types of forage, then that will make a better impact on the wild bees, and it will also be better for the farmers.

Farmers consider both wild bees and honeybees. I think both are complementary, and I think Nevada now has become officialized as a wild bee city or something like that. There was a project there to get it recognized, and so I think that went through there, and so, like I say, there's room, for I think room went through there. Like I said, there's room for everyone there. It's a matter that each type of insect has enough resources to eat. A lot of people say, well, they don't have that, they don't have that, etc. Well, instead of saying that, then I say do something about it. And, to finish, incite people to have gardens or things where wild bees can get their pollen or resources that they need, and you can find wild bees everywhere, and so, like I say, it's a matter of making sure that everyone has enough to eat.

Andy:

So the issue is less about the honeybees being there and more about the need for us to consider more diversity in our landscapes and more native plants, exactly.

Dr. John Kefuss:

There has to be more genetic diversity and more plant diversity. One thing people can do is stop mowing their lawns and plant native plants for the wild bees.

Andy:

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. John Kefuss:

I always like to look at the bees flying on the flowers, and so it's a good way to do it. Save on water, awesome, et cetera. Here in France, right now, we have a water shortage. I'm trying some of this year and so, like I said, you can adapt. You adapt your things, and when you have people preaching on either side for the bees or against the bees, you have people preaching on either side for the bees or against the bees you have to realize that often they're forgetting that it's an in-between area, which is actually more important than in extremes now.

Andy:

Are you concerned at all about disease being transferred from honeybees to native pollinators, or do you think natural beekeeping, treatment-free beekeeping, would address many of those issues?

Dr. John Kefuss:

I think treatment-free beekeeping will address a lot of issues and affect anything that's not resistant to dying out. If it dies out, then it's not going to be a source of disease. No, to be a source for disease, and, as I say, it's a matter of. There are probably some diseases. I know there are some that can be transmitted between bees and wild bees, but I think if your honeybees are selected against those diseases then there's going to be less of a transmission. And of course, you can maybe say the reverse comes also. Maybe there are diseases that can go from wild bees to honeybees.

I haven't seen any scientific publications that back that point up. But you have to consider it. You have things coming in sometimes from both directions. As I said, if you just let the bees select your bees for honey production and take the ones that show the best disease resistance, they are going to make a large impact all around. It's going to take some time, but in the long run, it's going to make a large impact all around. It's going to take some time, but in the long run, it's going to be cheap.

Just like we used to talk about what was that parasite that used to be on bees, or I forget it for so long, but there used to be a parasite that you find on bees, and now you don't find it anymore. Of course, it's probably due to the fact that the chemical treatments have killed them off. Your colonies will just have to let your colonies adapt. One thing you have to do is have an open mind. You have to realize that you don't always know all the answers.

Andy:

Sometimes, you have to just sit back and say, "Good, let's stop and watch for a while and see what happens," and then go from there. Yeah, I think for a lot of people, the idea of not being in control is really hard to do because that's how we're trained, whether it's as beekeepers or any type of livestock.

Dr. John Kefuss:

Your job is to help your animals, but you are also in control of the situation. But that's not always what the bees need, right? I saw an old cartoon from the Middle Ages where a bear was helping its owner by hitting a fly with a rock on his head.

I remember one research researcher, Jesse Wojcicki, told me that when he runs an experiment, he runs the experiment, and once he has the result then, he designs the next experiment. Now, a lot of researchers design an experiment, and they design the next experiment, the next experiment, even before they have the results of the first experiment. The problem is that you can get a bias that way. Like I said, I think working technique is good. Get the results, and once you have the results, then go from there. Don't try to program it all in advance as though you know what's the best thing to do, because sometimes you don't know what the best thing to do is.

Andy:

And that's okay. I think that's where people struggle. John, for folks who want to see more, hear more, or read anything, do you have any social media website papers or anything you'd want to point people to?

Dr. John Kefuss:

Well, I don't have any social websites or anything like that, but if they wish to read my publications, just type my name on the Internet, and then you'll see publications that have been associated with or done. And there's one that's important for me, an important publication that we published in the Journal of Agriculture Research in about 2015, and it's free of charge to everyone, as I paid out about two thousand dollars from my own pocket to make sure that everyone could have that free of charge.

It was the results of our bond test program over the years, and there you'll see the hard data that we have that backs up why this bond test is functional. They can also see why it's important to write down information and take data because sometimes it takes time to collect data, but that's how it is.

Andy:

Well, the work you've done will be felt for generations, I think.

Dr. John Kefuss:

Well, I hope more than generations, but good, that's my opinion.

Andy:

Yeah, John, thanks so much. This has been fantastic.

To hear this interview, you can listen to episode #144 of the Poor Proles Almanac.