Ep. 4 - Teaching Bees Math with Dr. Scarlett Howard

Nearly 20 years ago, Cedar Anderson set out to design an easier way to get honey from his beehives. Together with his father, Stu, he invented the Flow Hive—a revolutionary hive that lets beekeepers get "honey on tap." With over $13 million in pre-orders, his crowdfunding campaign is was one of the most successful in history. The innovative hive has drawn both admission and criticism from the beekeeping community. In this episode, Cedar walks us through the highs and lows of his journey.Check out a GIF of how the Flow Hive works: https://bit.ly/3NV2U6aLearn more about the Flow Hive at: https://www.honeyflow.com/Subscribe to our Patreon to help us produce more episodes of the show: https://www.patreon.com/buddhabeeapiary

What does it take to create a virtual world for bees that lets us study how they learn? Gregory Lafon is at the forefront of using this technique to study honey bee cognition. In this episode, he discusses the challenges involved in building VR for bees and what we stand to learn. Gregory Lafon is a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Toulouse. Read his full paper and see photos of the VR setup here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00630-xHelp support the podcast by becoming a patron: https://www.patreon.com/buddhabeeapiary

Bees rely on their sense of time to navigate and find food. Is there a chance that pesticides alter this sense of time? Manuel Giannoni Guzman is a postdoctoral scholar at Vanderbilt University. He and his team posed this question and designed an experiment to find out. Read the full research paper published in Nature:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72041-3Help support our podcast by pledging the cost of a cup of coffee. Or pledge a bit more to adopt a frame of bees! Learn more:https://www.patreon.com/buddhabeeapiary

Kamal Bell left his full-time job as a teacher to turn a 12-acre piece of land into a profitable farm and honeybee apiary. The goal? Educate young farmers and increase access to fresh produce for minorities affected by food deserts. In this episode, Kamal tells the story of how Sankofa Farms came to be.

Cassie Cichorz is the Asian Giant Hornet outreach and education specialist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture. In this episode, she tells the story of how her team used tracking technology to follow a hornet back to its nest—then what they did to eradicate it. If you’re in Washington and come across what you believe is an Asian Giant Hornet, you can report it to the WSDA by calling 1-800-443-6684.Watch video of the first eradication of an Asian Giant Hornet nest: https://youtu.be/JbIfOtpY5p8Look inside of a nest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT4BNlh1nrc

Dr. Scarlett Howard is a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin University in Melbourne Australia. She’s asking the question: can bees do math? In this episode, she talks to us about how she teaches bees about zero, addition, and subtraction.

There are millions of dollars being poured into trying to pass off cheap syrup as honey. Jim Gawenis is trying to stop it. He is the CEO and chief chemist of Sweetwater Science Labs, the only lab in the USA that uses Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) to ensure the authenticity of honey.

As the research leader of the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman has received grants for her research in excess of $6 million. In this episode, she shares how a deadly parasitic insect has overtaken honeybee colonies across the world and what we can do to stop it.

Justin Maness is the founder of Buddha Bee Apiary, a company that installs and manages beehives in backyards across North Carolina. They do all the work and provide the equipment—and the customer gets the honey. He believes hands-on education could be the key to helping honeybees. But, he’s up against some serious challenges. In this episode, we learn his story.