Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1908 - Erika Thompson
Uploaded: 2022-12-08T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1908 - Erika Thompson' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-12-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1908 - Erika Thompson' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-12-08. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1908 - Erika Thompson

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
This is your first podcast?
This is my first podcast.
Well, thank you very much for allowing me to be the host of you for the first
podcast.
Thank you so much for having me in the Bees.
My pleasure.
I became fascinated with Bees when we did an episode of Fear Factor,
where we had to cover these people in bees.
And it was this outdoor thing that we did at this ranch.
And while we were doing it, a local hive of bees came over and interacted with
our bees,
and we had to shut down production.
And so I talked to the beekeeper.
I said, what's going on?
And he said, we have to shut everything down for an hour or so while they work
this out.
While the bees work it out?
Yeah.
I'm like, what do you mean?
And he's like, well, they're going to communicate because these bees are trying
to figure out why these bees are here,
why our bees are there.
And I go, they're going to communicate?
Like, is it going to be a bee war?
He's like, no, they're going to sort it out.
And I'm like, how do they sort it out?
And it's kind of unknown, right?
Like how?
Sure.
Well, what happened with those bees?
They sorted it out.
And the other bees went away, and our bees came back and stayed, and then we
resumed the show.
That's great.
So what kind of communication are bees capable of?
Do we know?
We don't know everything there is to know about bees.
Bees have been around for 120 million years.
We've been keeping bees for maybe 10,000.
You know, if I were to think I knew more than the bees, that would be so
foolish of me.
But we do know some of the ways that bees communicate.
They communicate through scents, through pheromones a lot, through these
chemical signals that they're sending out to the entire colony to let this
colony that's a superorganism know what's going on.
And so in your case, you know, you had one colony of bees.
A colony is a collective noun, is the collective noun for a group of bees,
whereas a hive is the box they live in.
So you had these two colonies, you know, who met and were trying to make sure
they all stayed together and they all stayed with their queen and went to the
right place.
And, you know, it sounds like you had a bunch of bees in one area, and bees are
social creatures, so they were attracted to the scents of these other bees and
were there to see what's going on.
And, you know, they eventually figured it out, and everybody went back to their
respective places, and it was fine.
So what is happening, though, when they're figuring it out, they're smelling
that these other bees have a specifically different pheromone?
Yes, they will have a different scent, and that's how they'll stay with their
colony, and it comes from the queen.
The queen has a queen mandibular pheromone, and so she is sending out scent
signals, pheromones, to the colony, and they're always communicating with each
other.
And the queen and the worker bees have this wonderful system of checks and
balances to make sure that everything gets done within the hive and that the
colony is doing what it needs to.
Is it possible that bees who are like loner bees could integrate with another
hive?
Absolutely.
You know, it happens to me in my work all the time.
I remove bees from places, and, you know, I'll go in and take a colony and a
hive out and relocate it to my apiary.
And in that process, I don't always get every bee, of course.
And the bees that are left behind or if there's a loner bee, they can join
another colony.
And it's actually their chances of successfully joining are increased if they
bring gifts of pollen or honey.
Whoa.
Wow.
But, you know, bees live a very short lifespan, so sometimes they'll just live
out the rest of their bee life.
And the bees that we see out in the world foraging, they're at the end of their
short bee life.
How long is a bee's life?
So a worker bee, and we're talking about honeybees, western honeybees, the ones
you see me keep,
the lifespan of a female worker bee varies throughout the year.
So in the spring and summer, when the bees are working their hardest, the
female worker bees will only live about six weeks.
In the winter, when they're not doing quite as much, and when we need more bees
to make it through the winter, they'll live a little bit longer, and they'll
live about six months.
So when the bees and their bodies actually change in the winter, the bees that
are born later in the year and need to make it through the winter will have
more fat bodies on them so that they can make it through the dearth when there's
nothing in bloom and when bees are living off the honey that they collected or
stored in their hive earlier in the year.
The queen can live about five years, and most queens will live a little bit
shorter, but she can live significantly longer than all the other bees in the
hive, and then we have the worker bees who live about six weeks, six months,
the queen bee can live up to five years, and the drone bees will live about six
months, the male bees.
And what is the ratio of male bees to female bees?
A honey bee colony is about 95% female, and the amount of male bees can
actually fluctuate throughout the year, so when we need male bees around to
mate with a queen, and they'll mate with a queen, not their queen, but when we
need more male bees around, the colony will produce more male bees.
In the winter, when there aren't as many resources available to the bees, the
female bees will kick all the male bees out of the hive, and they'll either
starve or freeze to death.
So right now, there are no male bees in most hives, and these bees that came
along with me today, there's not a single male honey bee there.
They starve to death.
They starve to death.
They have no way of foraging.
They don't do the work of bees, so most people have never seen a male honey bee
before, and that's just because male honey bees are out in the world doing the
work of bees.
They stay in the hive, or they leave, and they go to drone congregation areas
to mate with a queen, but, you know, they're not going to be on a flower or in
your wine glass or whatnot.
So the male bees don't mate with their own females.
Would that be like mating with the mother?
That would be like incestuous, right?
So here's what happens within the colony when it's time for the queen bee to
mate.
So once a queen bee is born, when she reaches the ripe age of about seven days
old, she'll go on a mating flight, and she may go on only one, possibly two
mating flights in her entire life.
And she'll fly out of the hive, and she'll go to a drone congregation area,
which is exactly what it sounds like.
It's an area where there's a bunch of drone male honey bees flying around just
waiting for a queen bee to fly by, and these drone congregation areas exist
about 100 feet in the sky, which is another reason you would never see a male
honey bee.
But if a queen bee flies by, the fastest, strongest drones win, and they will
successfully mate with a queen, and the queen will mate with only about 15 to
20 drone bees, and she'll have enough sperm to last the rest of her life.
And what happens to the male bees is once they mate with a queen, their endophallus
rips out of their abdominal cavity, and they fall to the ground.
And that's the end of their little bee life.
Whoa.
So they die during mating.
They die during mating.
Whew.
Harsh life for a male bee.
Depending how you look at it, I guess.
Starved to death, die when you have sex.
Yes.
Rough.
I mean, but also, you know, his genes pass on, and he's a successful male honey
bee, so.
Yeah.
But they also don't have to do a lot of work in the hive, you know?
They don't forage for food, they don't build the hive, they don't have wax
glands, they don't even have stingers, they don't defend the hive, so they have
one role.
So how does the, do the males know, is there a specific time of the year where
the males know that the female queen is going to be flying around?
Sure, in the spring and in the summer, and that's when, you know, that's their
only job.
So if they're present, that's what they're trying to do, and that's why the
colony controls how many drones there are.
So right now, in the hive, there aren't that many drone bees because they're
trying to conserve the resources they have.
So the honey that we eat from bees is their food source in the winter when
nothing is in bloom and there's no, there's no flowers out there for them to
forage from.
Wow.
So when, what, what are they, the male bees when they're inside the hive, what's
their specific job, like what kind of work are they doing when they're in there?
They're really not doing a lot of work.
Just hanging out eating?
There's, some research will show that they're, you know, contributing to the
heating of the hive, but they're really not doing a lot of work.
Even when you see them in the colony, you know, not only can you distinguish
them because they look different from the female worker bees, they're larger
than the female worker bees, but they're not doing anything.
They're, they're walking around different, you know, they're kind of fumbling
and bumbling around.
And so they really don't have a lot of, a lot of purpose and which is why there
aren't that many of them.
You know, we have to keep in mind, they only make up about 5% of the population,
maybe 10, sometimes zero.
So there aren't that many male honeybees.
And I always love sharing with people that they probably have never seen one.
And so if you're ever near an observation hive or have the opportunity to go
into a hive with a beekeeper, you know, I encourage folks to do that and make
sure you ask to see a, see a male honeybee.
So they fly up in the air and they put a pheromone out that lets the queen know
that they're there.
Yes, they'll put a drone of, the drones will emit a pheromone and, you know,
the, and these drone congregation areas still remain somewhat of a mystery.
Um, they seem to be a place that the drones will go back to annually, but we
don't really know why or how they select these areas.
There's some research that shows, you know, they're covered by wind.
They're, they're going to be a safe area for this, for the bees to fly around,
but, um, and they're massive.
They're, they can be a hundred feet in the sky, but they can be about 500 feet
wide.
I mean, a ton of male honeybees flying around, just doing circles, waiting for
a queen to fly by.
And how does the queen detect where they are, like in terms of like pheromones?
I think it's just the chemical pheromones, you know, and they're, they're going
in, they're not flying that far from their hive area.
So, um, you know, it's within a radius. Bees to forage will only fly about two
miles.
So, um, but you know, it's a, they go every day. This is the males, the drones
fly out of the hive and try to do this, try to mate successfully every day.
So they're always doing this. And most drones will never mate with a queen, you
know, it's a small percentage of drones that mate with a queen because she only
mates with maybe 15 to 20 drones.
So do bees have a nose like we think of a nose? Is it they in, you know, their
world very much exists through scents, but it's not, they don't really have a
nose like we do.
So, you know, you know, they even have, um, they can taste through their feet.
They even have a way to taste the difference between sweet and salty through
their feet.
And I believe it's just glands that they're doing this through, but, you know,
they have antennae too, which their antennae help them, you know, move within
the colony and talk to each other and clean themselves.
Um, but, uh, yeah, they're remarkable little creatures.
There's, it's so fascinating how they have this uniform structure, the hive.
Yes.
With all these little catacombs and all these little combs that they create and
they all do it the same way.
Yes.
Like, how do they know how to do it? Do we have an understanding of how they
te