Cody'sBLab - 2022-06-01
using the cow turds to explain bee behaviour was brilliant
Turds are an underrated explanatory tool
@Wave of Mutilation Add cow chips to the "no gloves" list, apparently.
@idjtoal In a lot of the world people grew up having 'cow pat fights', where they would frisbee them into each other. Cow poop seems pretty harmless from what I've heard.
@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies it is
@Zen maybe, especially when dry. What disturbes me is the term "chips". That's a food word. It might be harmless, but I don't want to eat that.
I find it interesting that bees avoid "mixing" flower types. This is clearly beneficial for the flowers, but has no immediate advantage to the bees, only the long-term gain of increasing the rate of spread of flowering plants.
I know that bees store pollen in cells containing only that pollen, maybe reducing interactions between flowers has its advantages?
Might be species specific because I can't count how many times I've watched bees pollinate everything in sight in my garden in one swoop. I watch it all the time. Bee moves from tomatoes to cantaloupe to marigolds to petunias back to cantaloupe then to green beans to raspberries and more and more. Also this is how a lot of fruit pollination works when the tree needs a different variety or an individual male and female plant.
Because actually pollinating the flowers means they'll make more flowers. If they didn't bring pollen to a flower that would actually be compatible with the pollen they were carrying, the flowers wouldn't reproduce and the bees would have no more pollen to collect.
Cody briefly mentioned coevolution. Bees that do this to only a small degree further the development of plants around their hive and thus are more likely to survive in this richer environment. Given enough time, the sorting bees will outperform their random collecting competitors. That's just how evolution works.
The advantage is that the species that evolved to avoid mixing gets, overall, a greater supply of food in the future. The bees don't know that, but they still have a selection pressure to do this, ofr the same reason flowers evolve to be bee-attractive: co-evolution.
Never thought the bees only fly to one flower type per "round" that's a pretty amazing evolutionary trait, and your explanation of how they do it is really great.
Of course the bees don't know about how it evolved. The reason that "floral consistency", as it's called, is an advantage for the bees is that it takes less energy. Switching from one type of flower to another takes effort, because flowers have different shapes. The bees don't like to spend energy on switching tasks.
This, in turn, is one of the reasons why flowers evolved to have different shapes. It incentivizes floral consistency in the pollinators, thus helping the flowers.
@Daniel Bamberger That is an unsatisfying explanation, there is no reason it would take more energy to switch between flower types, they have already fully left one flower and are flying. Possibly you have a half remembered anecdote you learned, or maybe aren't explaining it fully?
It would be interesting to understand the mechanism that makes bees consistent, but people should be fully prepared to say we don't know, we just think that's how they evolved. "energy use" doesn't pass the plausibility test.
@John Reeves it's because every creature on the planet works with the planet, except for us. So our expectations are nonsense.
@John Reeves Well for humans it's much easier to do the same task 100x instead of switching constantly.
That said, it's probably better to look for reputable sources for these kinds of questions.
@John Reeves same reason as in a industrial plant you don't switch working stations and only do one thing.
it always takes some time and effort to switch and adapt to task.
remember when you were a kid and had to pain a drawing? if you have to go and choose colours as you go, you will do it far slower than if you simply repeat a pattern.
repetition saves time and we know that since the first days of industrialization.
We have a local bee keeper that trades us honey (not a large amount. We don't use much) to allow him to keep bees on our property. He is a great guy. So, we just want him to have a solid place to do his job. It costs us nothing. It is definitely great for our ranch. We love the work the bees and their keepers do in our ranching community. I love how much I have learned from your bee series over the years. Thanks.
Barter system at work. Sometimes, it just works
Cody, you are a great inspiration for me regarding how you explain stuff. You seem to be able to break down the most complex subjects in a way that anyone is able to understand it effortlessly and has fun while learning something new. This video was no exception! You could have explained it by drawing it on a piece of paper, but I like your way much better, because demonstating it helps getting an intuitive and natural understanding and not just the theory behind it.
Thank you for making these great videos all these years!
And he got poop for whatever he's gonna do with it! Genius! I found it interesting that grass was still green under that poop!
Awesome demonstration, Cody. As a teacher, it's inspiring to see you perform. You're succinctly and thoroughly explaining a phenomenon using easy to parse language and good analogies. I've used your demonstration of relative distance in the solar system in my classes before, and this one would be great for my biology 7th graders, who finish their year learning about bees.
Thank you for all the years of educational and entertaining content.
It gives me legitimate hope for Education to know there are teachers using practical examples like Cody's for teaching. Thank you for going the extra mile for your students!
That makes the layout of honey bee farms I've seen a lot more understandable, thanks for another great video cody!
Honey bee farm? Is that a thing? Or do you mean apiary?
@ximono what's the difference
@Boyce Fenn I haven’t heard the term honey bee farm before. An apiary is where the hives are kept, and professional beekeepers have many apiaries. But they're not farms. We typically refer to it as beekeeping operations.
@ximono it may not be technically correct but it isn't definitionally wrong. I think bee farm is an apt description. I have a hard time believing that someone who knows what an apiary is would be confused by "bee farm" so why pretend? for the sake of pedantry?
You learn something cool everyday! Thanks Cody for the great informational content no matter how far bee-tween videos.
bee-tween
Hive been seeing quite a bit of buzz about the bees in da trap, bees-bees in da trap.
The obligatory bee pun. Not to bad as they go😆👍
I now understand that when you carry a lot of turd you are burning energy, that you have to consume the turd when your hungry. Hence the name amber turd were born
@Have Fun Ta Za Ra Su that’s the silliest thing I have amber heard…
It is called flower fidelity, once they start on a nectar source they will not leave it until the resource is depleted, generally bees won’t forage near the hive as to not attract predators to the colony, bees best foraging radius starts at around 300m to 2000m and will travel over 8km if they have to.
this is so cool! I noticed that some bees would come and visit my flowering basil plants and then never came back once the flowers were gone. Even though the flowers are back again, they haven't returned. I miss them :(
Other people: "Soon we'll have to have the talk about the birds and the bees."
Cody: "Let's talk about the cow turds and the bees."
And everyone looked at me when I laughed suddenly. That's funny.
I had the weirdest bee experience ever last week.. I was standing out by our rosemary watching the bees on it and sweating like crazy (it was in the 90's) and one of our local/natural bees (you can tell the difference between them and brought in hive bees by the color, native bees are dark with green banding where brought in hive bees are the typical orange/gold color and a little bigger) landed on the inside of my arm.. Needless to say I was scared I was about to get stung but it kind of waggled on my arm and then I saw it's head go down and the best I can figure is it was drinking my sweat and then after a bit it took off.
I think there was a sign in Joshua tree park that said bees seek moisture in that way.
I wonder if the bee needed salt? Sweat is pretty salty, it's not clean water.
@Lurmey I know I've heard of insects (butterflies etc.) licking sweat off of mammals for salt before, so I wouldn't be too surprised.
There was a bunch of hives on a field adjacent to the allotment in my home town and in the middle of summer the bees would hover up and down near my forehead and shoulders to get at my sweat. I'd fill dishes with rainwater if any is available(they seem to prefer it a bit over chlorinated tap water judging by visitor numbers) and put rocks in there to prevent them falling in and drowning along with bits of algae and moss to wick moisture up and make it more accessible. Usually it'd pull a good 10-50 individuals depending on how dried up the local troughs and water butts were, they're a thirsty bunch.
@CATASTEROID they take water off our fountain all the time... unfortunately my dog is dead set on eating EVERYTHING that moves and loves to decimate bees.
I live in a place where one of my neighbors has enough property to have a couple hives on the back edge (he lives on the edge of a hill so no one near the hives.) We see his bees all over the neighborhood. His bees are so clam that you can touch them while they are collecting on a flower and everyone knows it. We all have learned to live side by side with the bees because it's kind of fun to be able to get close and watch them. The bee keeper gives a jar of honey to everyone for Christmas to say thank you for caring for the bees too.
that's his bribe so you don't get hives for yourselves :^)
That’s so cute 🥹
I usually don't like bees near me because their erratic flight makes me nervous, but its amazing when my pitanga tree starts to flower, and there are so many bees around that I can hear the thunderous buzz of hundreds of bees from like 10m away. I usually just sit in my backyard in the morning to watch the bee battalion gorge on all the flowers.
Not a good sign if you only see honeybees around your area. They're not native and aren't nearly as effective as native bees. Saving the bees is about native varieties and especially solitary species.
We recently found out there is a nest of bumblebees in our roof, and indeed I notice that they don't mind visiting all the flowers very near to the nest, so definitely different behavior than bees.
bumblebee nests are more of a free community than a true hive
Thats better than the nest of yellow jackets that somehow got into the space between the floors of my house and also found a way into the rooms. It was late fall so they were mostly dead, but it still wasn't nice opening a door and finding 30 yellow jackets flying around.
I hope they are not carpenter bees they can look pretty close on the Fly
@milodudeful that's a fucking nightmare
@Marco Genovesi And they love pots. Everything in a bumblebee nest is in a pot. It’s hard not to like bumblebees.
6 years ago I turned 15 and got bees for my birthday, I found your channel and your main Cody’s lab bee videos got me into beekeeping. Within the next year or two I hope to jump to commercial beekeeping. Than you for the inspiration, and for the great content.
You're such a great teacher. This is something I would've thought previously "just put a lot of flowers near the hives" but you covered every point why that is not the case so succinctly.
@Anne Onyme u ok?
@Hayley lol felt asleep
@Anne Onyme 😂
This is very interesting to me as a beekeeper whose husband has spent quite a bit of time building what he call the “bee sanctuary” in our yard around the hives. Technically, the structure & plants are also to add privacy & the mulch keeps him from having to mow the area, but it’s funny to think that the bees mostly won’t enjoy the flowers. I suppose it will help keep the bees out of the main yard during dearth though. 🤷🏻♀️
I didn't know bees would only visit one kind of flower at a time! I knew bees seem to love the sorts of plants that have tall stalks with lots of tiny flowers but now I know why I always see bees favoring the catnip in my neighborhood
Fascinating.
A friend who has bees always faces the entrance towards a fence or a hedge (a few feet away)... Partly for shelter, but also he said it forces the bees to go up when they exit, which he says makes them forage further.
I have no idea how true this is or not, but that's what he told me.
I will trust this youtube comment as fact.
I will trust this youtube comment as fact.
I don't think this is true at ll.
My friend shot his bees out of a musket for the same reason.
@Mar pff like I trust a youtube reply. What am I taking, crazy pills.
I am a working this summer as a counselor at a camp and this video was not only super informative to me, it gave me a great idea for a science based game I can play with my campers next week to help them understand these concepts of how bees find food and pollinate plants.
I've been beekeeping off and on for a few years and I didn't know the reason for this behavior! Great explanation, thanks!
Both bees & Cody use the same algorithm to collect fuel.
A perfect description & a great analogy. Thank you 🐝
I missed this series! Please do more frequent updates on your beekeeping journey 👍
Good to see you back. Hope you are well Cody 🖤
This makes so much sense and explains something i've noticed on my walks with our dogs. There's a batch of i think 4 beehives right by one of our usual routes. It's at the edge of forest and next to some crop fields and there's also some sort of small (maybe 20m x 20m ) community flower garden right next to the hives. I've walked through that garden millon times and I've never seen bees there pollinating, at any time of the year.
what's interesting to me is that I have my hives in a yard with 3 mango trees, whose tops burst into brilliant yellow in early spring- the largest of which actually shades the hives. and we do have other mango trees in the neighborhood and surrounding areas, so there's definitely plenty to make them a viable food source, even if our individual trees weren't enough. I've absolutely seen my bees on them, even close enough to be sipping nectar from flowers that have fallen on the hive roof! I'm sure bees do have an impulse to fly further out, and collect on their way back- but I have to imagine that if a scout finds a windfall of flowers on their doorstep on the way home, she'll definitely tell the rest of the hive exactly where they are.
idk. i've seen mixed opinions on the whole "do bees pollinate flowers right next to the hive?" and i can't imagine that these creatures, who've evolved so heavily for all the efficiency their tiny bodies can muster, would ignore something like that. if you happen to have open honey or something fragrant and sugary anywhere near a hive, the same logic certainly doesn't apply!
I recently moved out of Nevada. Seeing those mountains again is always a pleasant sight. Not only did you show me my old home, you taught me a very valuable lesson about honey bees. Thank you for your wisdom.
Excellent explanation and demonstration, thanks Cody. I remember as a kid when I’d go shopping with my parents and on the way from parking into town centre (or shopping mall, whatever), we’d pass shops we planned (on the ride in) to visit with the words “Oh, we’ll drop in there on the way back.” It didn’t take too long for me to figure out the reason why - no point lugging 2lbs of fruit & veg to every single other store we went to when we could just buy that last and only have to carry the extra bulk the last 5 mins to the car. For some reason we call those ‘cow pats’ in the UK. I guess it’s the typical round flat shape. It’s only natural that Cody would’ve grown up on a farm when you see him out collecting dried cow shit with his bare hands for a specific purpose. Firestarters?
This was so incredibly informative! I didn't expect to learn about bee behavior today, but I'm glad I did. I would have never guessed this is how they reason if you hadn't explained it so well
That was a spectacular video man! You are an amazing teacher, that cow turd demonstration was literally genius! I totally got what you where saying, and now I understand why Bees don’t collect the pollen near their hives! I don’t even keep Bees and saw this video randomly, but it was so interesting I stayed and learned something new 😂😂 So thank you for that!
It's always a good day when I see a video from you Cody.
I had a pretty good laugh at the energy cost of transport problem illustrated with a bucket and cow pies instead of trains and coal. (I'm looking forward to the asteroid mining example next!)
Applying this to asteroid mining is gonna be interesting, because what matters in space isn't your physical distance, it's more so your relative velocity, inclination, and other factors, so optimizing for that will be a bit different
Super interesting topic! And what a brilliant science communicator you are, Cody! I'd love more of these bee behavior videos, they're super fascinating little critters.
Great video as always! I like how you threw in the part about keeping bees in a greenhouse. I'm assuming you are highlighting as a concern in planning future space habitats. Very cool!
A couple of times in the past i saw bees disoriented or with low energy lying in the ground. I always have a nice spoon full of natural honey to help them get back home. It works instantaneously. I dont know why i started to do that but i like it. It must be that i really appreciate the hard work of those creatures. Since i started to grow my own vegetables im more aware of their importance.
Extremely effective lesson. Thank you professor Cody!
This reminds me of a noni tree I used to have. It was one of the two in the general vicinity, but, since each is pumped full of inflorescences, each with a couple of tens of flowers, the local stingless bees loved visiting it all day
Quick heads up: Those aren't hyacinth, they are Muscari which are commonly known as 'grape hyacinth' but are not actually Hyacinthus.
Hyacinth have a beautiful smell, especially the bluebells you are mistaking those for, do yourself a favour and get some for winter, keep them in pots so you can bring them inside. One plant will perfume a bedroom for days!
While I get that a lot of people like the smell of hyacinths, I just can't. On the surface it kind of smells like lilac which is fine, but under that it has this sort of sickly sweetness (like old roadkill in the summer imo)
But I might just be weird. Idk. Grape hyacinth (not a 'true' hyacinth) are fine for me.
Sorry for the rambles
Hey Cody !
Do you also breed Wild bees 🐝 or have an interest in them ? Those are by far the most endangered and most important pollinators on earth 🌍 !
Hi my name is Erik and I have bees in Sweden, we have a project here at Lund university with bees and behavior where they concluded recently that honeybees (swedish honeybees atleast) visit different kinds of flowers during same flight. They saw that one bee could visit up to 20-30 different kind of flowers during same flight. And this saying that bees only visit one kind of flower during one flight is something I have never heard about before watching american beekeping films. I was trying to find the project and the publication but I couldnt find it. But I know some of the people on the project so I can come back with more information in the matter if there is a interest.
Best Regards Erik
There are hundreds of different types of bees though
@naylene hess Depends on what kind of bees we are talking about, the western honey bee Apis mellifera and its around 12 subspecies which are the common bees for beekeping around the world. Since the western honey bee wasnt even in America before colonists brought it there makes is even more interesting.
But yes if we go to discuss solitary bees then there are 100-1000 different ones.
I have the image after beeing a beekeper for almost 16 years from I was 12 years old, alot of the "knowledge" contains alot of assumptions. Which is why I felt the need to discuss here after watching the video from above.
I will meet one of the project workers during the week so I can ask about the results.
We are working on saving the northern europe honey bee Apis mellifera mellifera, which is the one that occured in the wilds of northern europe before people started with the breeding of different bees.
@Erik Carlström "beeing a beekeeper" haha. Probably an unintentional little pun there, but that made me smile
@Erik Carlström keep up the work on amm 😊
this makes more sense to me.
Super interesting. Hope to see more of you soon Cody! How's the base coming along?
Thanks Cody, it's always appreciated to learn new stuff, and You don't know if it may be useful in the future, which is great, thanks again for the amazing content that you always give us.
It was super good to hear from you again, Cody! It's been too long. Would love it if you could do some quick vids to show updates on things like your photosynthetic panel project, maybe some YT shorts?.
I love your beekeeping series and this was super cool to learn about - I always wondered about the cross-species pollination issue!
Yep, good video in fact . It was rather enthralling. You covered an aspect of bees which i didn't know about .
I'm always reticent to waste the dandelion leaves . They're good in salads . If you have wild mustard , maybe canola will also grow .
Fascinating really because it's the same pattern of 'weeds' as here where i am in Australia.
I stumbled on this video completely randomly, but it was one of the most interesting and well explained videos I've seen! Thank you! :)
Flowing trees are great for bees (but expensive to plant, of course). We have a couple of Rose of Sharon bushes, as do quite a few of our neighbors, and I always see bumble bees going nuts over them. It's basically impossible to pick them to put in a vase because they're always full of bees and other pollinators like wasps.
This is actually extremely useful and I’m surprised I didn’t know it cuz this makes sense and I’m no stranger to bees… it also explains why the orange trees get all the bees and everything else gets ignored
I miss you Cody know you busy but just hope everything is swell with you. You always make very interesting videos thank you for great content over the years
great video! and always love hearing about bees. specially native bees that are actually endangered. (like bumble bees).
drives me nuts when people say honey bees are in trouble. all research i have seen says their numbers are actually increasing over the years. Ofc there are hive die outs over the winter. but these are bee keepers bees and quickly splits and swarm catches swell those numbers back up.
We really should start using less pesticide it's wreaking havoc on all insects, and insects are incredibly important for healthy ecosystems!
@cr4zyj4ck not wrong
You always amaze me with the amount of knowledge in different areas you possess.
cool video cody.
when can we expect an update on the algae bioreactor?
Planning to make one myself, but also play around with bioelectricity which was demonstrated in a recent paper where they made a small battery out of cyanobacteria.
LumberJak - 2022-06-02
At work I frequently have to fill up wheelbarrows with stuff from multiple locations and then bring it back to where I started, and it amazes me how many people will go to the closest location first, then carry that stuff to the next one, then end up at the farthest location with a full wheelbarrow. I have tried to explain to people that starting at the farthest location first will make them use less energy but they somehow think that walking to the farthest one first with an empty wheel barrow is a waste of time because you aren't carrying anything.
I am glad to now know that I think like a bee.
Snek - 2022-06-02
So they don't bee-lieve you?
Neil A Bliss - 2022-06-02
Bees bee smarter than some people
snigwithasword - 2022-06-02
Yeah that sure sounds like manager / boss brain.
acephantom903 - 2022-06-02
You would think after a couple of full wheelbarrows they would have figured it out. lol That is the way I do it, but it has been so long since I've done work like that I forgot why I did it that way. It was like a light turning back on watching this.
William Borgeson - 2022-06-02
And I'm probably one of those people that you were surprised looking at, it honestly never occurred to me (and I'm older) until watching this video.