A Honey Bee Expert on Killer Bees, Colony Collapse, and Working for the World's Most Hated Company

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] This is The Mans Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. I'm really glad you're here, and we're gonna jump into the interview with Jerry Hayes, international beekeeping expert. But before we do, I wanted to do a little bit of housekeeping. So a few months ago, I decided that this dream that I had had of running a podcast I was gonna try and make happen, and I knew that it wouldn't be perfect right when I started. And so what I decided to do was to lay out five interviews with really interesting people that I would enjoy interviewing. And I wanted those people to be people that I thought were so high in my respect for them, that it would force me to really work on this. I couldn't just put it off. It wasn't just gonna be with my friends who would forgive me. I wanted to invite people in here that, that my self-respect was dependent on them saying, Hey, he did a good job there. He asked me good questions. I felt like he was paying attention. I felt like he had a setup that was worthy of the expertise that I had. And so that's what I did. I, I did five interviews, and during that process, I just did my first interview, the one with Tim Hausler, and I did it as well as I could. But as soon as I watched the recording of it, I saw all sorts of flaws and things that I could improve. So I decided that the next thing I would do is every single podcast I do, I'm going to improve it as much as I can. I'm gonna make the choice that makes the biggest jump in the quality improvement.

Vance Crowe [00:01:34] And so that led me to doing things like creating soundproofing in my room and changing the way that I set up the microphones and even how I placed the camera. And so I did this over five interviews, and hopefully you can tell the progress that's been made throughout. And now, after having done those first five and seeing the audience response and actually learning as much as I have from the people I've interviewed, I've decided I'm going all in. I'm really gonna push the limits on what I can learn by making this podcast. So as you can hopefully hear, but definitely see if you're watching on YouTube, I've made an investment into some new microphones, and I'm gonna keep working on the studio in here. And as I get better with the equipment, what that does is it frees up my time to be able to focus on the content, to be able to ask better questions, to do more research. And this interview that you're about to watch is the manifestation of what happens when you give me a little bit more time, not to focus just on the equipment and the sound, but really on what are the core things that people wanna know. And when I found out that Jerry Hayes international beekeeping expert was going to be on the podcast, I went to Facebook and I asked you guys, what kind of questions would you be interested in me answering? And I got loads of questions, all sorts of enthusiasm and excitement, everything from is colony collapse real? And what can we do to save the bees to, what's the difference between the honeybees that we have in the US and all of the wild bees that we see out pollinating flowers during the rest of the spring, summer, and fall?

Vance Crowe [00:03:10] And so Jerry Hayes and I got to sit down and really have an interesting conversation where straight outta the gate, he starts telling me about things like, when did he first see Africanized honeybees? And I'll give you a little clue, it was at an autopsy. So this is a really capturing interview where what he's talking about are things that maybe you've heard a little bit about before, but you've certainly never heard it in this depth. And Jerry Hayes is an extraordinary storyteller. He has a way of taking concrete facts and illuminating them so that you remember them, so you understand what he's saying, and so that you can even pass them on. One of the things that you'll note is towards the end, Jerry and I talk about our time working at Monsanto together. That is actually the way that I got to know Jerry. We were both in roles where Monsanto had hired us to learn about the company from the inside, and then go out and talk to various people that had questions about the technology. We don't get into it too deep in this interview, but in the future, I'm sure I'll have Jerry come in and talk more about it. But what we did talk about was what were we doing? How did it feel to have your integrity on the line, and to stand up on a stage and have people really deeply wanna know, are you telling me the truth about this company that I've heard so much about? But anyway, if you're, if you're around for that part of the interview, I think you'll enjoy it. The first about hour is Jerry just talking bees, which is what he knows best. And I am so excited to share this with you. I hope that you will watch it.

Vance Crowe [00:04:41] I hope if you like it, you will find a way to review us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, or make sure you're hitting the like button. And then definitely subscribe and leave comments to help me figure out how to make this better. So this has been a long introduction. I hope that you are enjoying what you've seen so far. And please let me know if you have anybody that you think has an expertise that I can learn from. The thing that I'm going to be doing as we go forward with these podcasts is finding better and better and better experts that are able to take what they've learned in their field and how they learned it, and be able to generalize that to people like you and me. And one of the things that I've come to realize is every single one of these experts has developed some form of discipline in their life that can be applied to our lives to make our quest for mastery the same as their quest for mastery, just maybe in a different domain. So without further ado, let me introduce Jerry Hayes. I hope you'll enjoy. Okay, well, so to start off, just for anybody that doesn't know you are Jerry Hayes, beekeeping expert, beekeeping extraordinaire, and even once the coverboy of Wired magazine for all of your beekeeping activities.

Jerry Hayes [00:05:56] Yeah. And that and 50 cents will get me a diet soda. So,

Vance Crowe [00:06:00] So, so let's just start from the very beginning. You were not born a beekeeper. You decided to become a beekeeper. What were you doing before you were a beekeeper?

Jerry Hayes [00:06:08] Oh, so the, the Jerry story is that I started out in life as a high school teacher. And you know, when you get out of university, you want to save the world in one way or another. And I thought I could save the world by being a high school teacher. And found it really depressing because the school I was in, the teacher, some of 'em hadn't done a lesson plan, you know, for 20 years. They were just on automatic looking to retire. And so what

Vance Crowe [00:06:36] Subject were you teaching in high

Jerry Hayes [00:06:37] School? So I was teaching, I was teaching biology, but I was also the head track coach and assistant football coach. And so sports was different. I mean, you have kids that are motivated and wanna do stuff and maybe a little bit different level, but the, the classroom part of it was, was kind of depressing. I, you know, I had 12 year olds that were pregnant in class and, you know, that kinda stuff. And so anyway, I thought, oops, you know, I'm making, I'm making golly with a coaching bonus back then, a hundred years ago, you know, $8,500 a year. And I'm thinking, you know, oh, I made a mistake. So I thought, well, let's, let's do something different. So I, I did something different, actually went into the plastics business. So if you wanna ask me any questions about plastics, plexiglass or lexan or phenolics, I'm here for you buddy. And I had a guy working with me with, who was a beekeeper. He and his brother were hobby beekeepers in Wisconsin. And I thought, well, this is kind of interesting. Everybody knows about honeybees, but nobody actually knows a beekeeper. And so kind of quizzed him and asked him questions and asked more questions and became more interested. And then, you know, started reading things and asking more questions. And then I turned into the consummate backyard beekeeper. I did everything backyard beekeepers do and shouldn't do. And I made things and killed stuff and did all that kind of junk. And then as

Vance Crowe [00:08:09] The Wait, wait, but, but see, there's a big jump that you just made there, because most people are afraid of bees. So you, did you just jump in and, and went with them and put on all their gear and all of the stuff that beekeepers do?

Jerry Hayes [00:08:21] Yeah. You know, and that's a great question. I never, I've never even thought about that. Yes, honeybees hurt when they sting. They, you know, they're, they're only defensive for two reasons. Species defense or, or colony defense. And anybody who says it doesn't hurt when you get stung is a liar. But I, that never even entered my mind. I was more interested in the biology and their connection to the environment and what they do. I mean, as an, you know, individually they're an insect, but communally, they're almost mammalian. And that was just fascinating. So backyard beekeeper. And then I thought, could somebody actually make a living doing this and take care of a family? So very patient wife. And so Ohio State University had an aquaculture honeybee program, and so we picked up everything and loaded it into a U-Haul truck and, and drove to Ohio State University. And so went through that program with Dr. Jim Tu that I just mentioned. And then from there I went and worked for the U-S-D-A-B Breeding and Stock Lab.

Vance Crowe [00:09:30] So you came out with an undergrad in beekeeping, what was it?

Jerry Hayes [00:09:34] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:09:35] Yeah,

Jerry Hayes [00:09:35] Just, yeah, just, yeah. It wasn't anything special, but it was special for me. DR two was the best thing I needed at that time. Just a wonderful, wonderful professor, wonderful guy. I joked around, I get, it was just, you know, how things just fit for you sometimes he fit for me. And so, learned a ton. And then went to work for USJ for a little while, and then went to work for a company called Day An And Sons in Hamilton, Illinois at the time. What,

Vance Crowe [00:10:07] What did, what is Bee College like? What are you learning? Like, it was, is it partying on the weekends and, and

Jerry Hayes [00:10:16] No, it was, everything about, everything just was about honeybees. We, we had a, a big research apiary, if you will. And so I assembled equipment and did things and, and we had a program where we would pretend to be commercial beekeepers, and we loaded a truck up with bees and we'd drive it to Jim's hometown of Dothan, Alabama from Worcester, Ohio. And did that and just, no, it was all hands-on doing everything with people who are like-minded. It was, it was great.

Vance Crowe [00:10:53] And then you finish up and you do find a job in beekeeping.

Jerry Hayes [00:10:56] Oh, yeah, yeah. Which is unusual. Certainly a small, unique industry. But, but by the same token, if you have, there, again, if you have a passion for something real, passion for something other people notice and they want that regardless of how small the industry is. And so, yeah. So I found a job, jobs, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:11:21] And and what types of stuff were you doing?

Jerry Hayes [00:11:23] W where I've been, I've been many places where,

Vance Crowe [00:11:27] Exactly. So I mean, I guess I, the, the real question is like, what is there to do? I mean, you're not just going out and maybe you are, are you going out and collecting honey? Is this your job or are you

Jerry Hayes [00:11:35] No. So at the USDA lab, that's when Africanized bees were moving up through Mexico. And so I worked in the lab and we were pulling off wings off of samples of bees that were sent up from Mexico so that we could look at different wing vation so that we could plug all this in and have morph a metrics, a measurement so that when we had Africanized bees here, we would be able to identify those bees by Wing Van Nation.

Vance Crowe [00:12:04] I am so glad you brought up the Africanized Bees, because I put out a thing on Facebook and said, Hey, I'm, I'm gonna interview Jerry Hayes, bee expert, do you have any questions? And I got a phone call from a friend of mine who said, I didn't really want to put this in writing 'cause I'm embarrassed of it. But when I was a kid, I used to be afraid that the Africanized bees were gonna get us all. And as soon as he said it, I was like, oh my gosh. I can remember vividly playing in the backyard with my friends, talking about the horrible Africanized bees that were coming for us. And they would get into your air vents and climb through your windows and your house would be covered. What the hell happened?

Jerry Hayes [00:12:42] So from dad, aunt and sons in Hamilton, Illinois, I went and I was the chief of the apiary, the honeybee section for the Florida Department of Agriculture. And we found Africanized bees in Florida that had come over on shipping traffic from Mexico to Tampa. And so we had some in south Florida, and I remember the first incident was a, a 900 pound horse was killed by these bees. And I was there at the autopsy. And when Africa's bees sting, they, they, one of their target acquisition things is CO2. So they'll fly up the CO2 stream, and they don't kill by in venation, like stinging you so many times, you know, like a rattlesnake. They'll go up. And then in this case, it went up the horse's nose and in its mouth. And, and the autopsy, the, and I don't know how you can picture this, but the vet had probably several handfuls of bees he pulled out of the horse's lungs and stomach because they'd stung there, swell up. And so the horse died of asphyxiation. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:13:55] My God.

Jerry Hayes [00:13:56] And so after that, over a couple years, you know, we'd lost lots of pets and livestock and goats and, and we had two human deaths, the same thing. So this, this was a big, so

Vance Crowe [00:14:10] It was real. It

Jerry Hayes [00:14:11] Was, it was real, real. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. This was, oh yes, this was, this was real. And so my fear and my job was that beekeepers were going to be regulated and ordinance out of beekeeping managed bees because these wild bees were influencing the public opinion about things. And so people would think that beekeepers are part of the problem instead of part of the solution by providing different genetics in, in the thing. So yeah, it was, it was a, a climb up the hill a little bit.

Vance Crowe [00:14:47] So what happened, how, how, why did Africanized bees not take over everything?

Jerry Hayes [00:14:52] They, I

Vance Crowe [00:14:52] Mean, I wanna get back to your career, but we That's fine. You did bring up Africanized bees.

Jerry Hayes [00:14:56] That's fine. No, they have, they have made it. So the, the thing is that, that we have a lot of, we have,

Vance Crowe [00:15:04] I'm gonna push that a little closer too.

Jerry Hayes [00:15:05] Yeah. We have a lot of hobby beekeepers. We have a lot of commercial beekeepers and honeybees queens. When a, when a colony wants to swarm divide and, and make another one of itself, Virgin Queens will go out into an area called a drone congregation area. These changes, this is where drones, the males of the bees from colonies all around kind of congregate there, waiting for a, a virgin queen to, to fly through. And then she'll mate in the air with, you know, 15 or 20 of these. And so we have so many managed bees that don't have the defensive characteristics of Africanized bees, that in many cases those defensive characteristics are calmed down because of this in interbreeding with bees that, that are, are calmer and more docile. So you'll have some influences, you'll still find in cases you may have africanized bees, but they're not defensive, but they'll do things Africanized bees do. They'll, they'll nest underground, they'll nest in a water meter box, they'll nest in a, a burrow of a, a turtle or a gopher or something. Those are characteristics of Africanized bees, not of our European bees. And so they'll have these characteristics that aren't defensive, but they indicate that they probably have some africanized bees genes in them.

Vance Crowe [00:16:31] So the, that's really interesting. You know, you, you don't often think about the fact that the bark of a dog is encoded in its genes, right. That's just the way that it is. But with bees, and you're talking about the behaviors of bees, it really becomes pretty apparent that the, their behaviors are genetically encoded in them. If you're saying by mixing these two different breeds of bees

Jerry Hayes [00:16:54] Races,

Vance Crowe [00:16:54] Races of bees, then then you start having different behaviors by these groups. That's fascinating.

Jerry Hayes [00:16:59] No, it, no, it is fascinating. And, and when you think, why, why do we have, why do Africanized bees so grumpy? And, and so you have to look to Africa that they were predated on by other animals. They have honey badgers, they have you and I, our ancestors, everything else. So this was Darwin and action. The meanest ones didn't get destroyed and

Vance Crowe [00:17:22] They didn't get their

Jerry Hayes [00:17:22] Honey stolen or anything else. So this is, this is what happened. And so what happened was that, that, how they got over here was there was a, a professor in Bri, Brazil called Warwick Kerr, European Bess are bees that come from Northern Europe, Germany, what have you, don't do very well in the tropics. They have adapted to live in cold areas, don't do well in the tropics. So all our bees here in the United States and Central and South America were European bees. What they don't do very well in the tropics, it's just too hot. They don't have seasonal cues. It's warm all the time. So this Warwick curse said, well, you know, let's bring some bees over from Africa, that same latitude, let's bring 'em over these bees that are used to the tropics and we'll be able to replace those because they will do better pollination for us and will have better crops. So he collected, I don't know, a whole bunch of different kinds of bees and queens and they were stopped at customs for like a week or so. And there again, Darwin in action, the only bees out of this group that lived were these really grumpy ones. All the other ones died. So they came over to Brazil and he had a controlled the research area. But long story short, the bees got out and basically

Vance Crowe [00:18:50] Took over. No way. I had no idea humans are the ones that, that made all this happen.

Jerry Hayes [00:18:56] Oh yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:18:57] Whoa. And so now they're in Brazil. When, when would this have been?

Jerry Hayes [00:19:03] 19 56, 57, something like that. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:19:07] And, and then from there,

Jerry Hayes [00:19:08] So they're the most success. Yeah. So they just went loose, they went crazy. Our, our honeybees, European bees will, will swarm maybe once, maybe twice a year. Remember they're always preparing for winter. So they want to build up a colony store enough honey to make it through a cold hard German winter. Africanized bees, I don't care, they'll swarm 15, 16, 17 times a year because they don't have to worry about winter when they're in Africa or Brazil. And so they did all this wonderful reproduction and basically took over South America, moved up through Mexico and, and then entered into Texas and, you know, went from there.

Vance Crowe [00:19:53] And so there are a real problem still in, in places like Brazil and Central America.

Jerry Hayes [00:19:57] Yeah, yeah. What's a problem? I think we get used to things. So in Brazil, lots of Africanized bees, they've learned to manage them to some degree, but they still have maybe 300 stinging deaths a year. But that's just,

Vance Crowe [00:20:19] That sounds like a problem to me, but I,

Jerry Hayes [00:20:21] I guess in the scale

Vance Crowe [00:20:22] Of things, but

Jerry Hayes [00:20:22] It's just, that's just the way it is.

Vance Crowe [00:20:23] Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [00:20:23] Yeah. Wow.

Vance Crowe [00:20:25] So, okay, but we like made a huge jump here. Maybe we should slow down because there's a, like you and I have had many, many chances to talk about bees and you made a little bit of a reference to it that the sweet honeybees that we know now today are of German, an ancestry or something

Jerry Hayes [00:20:42] Like that. Yeah, German. Yeah. So all over Europe, German, Italian and pro primarily. And so those bees were brought over in the 18 hundreds because beekeepers were interested in, in a, a calm or gentler bee that,

Vance Crowe [00:21:03] Is it safe to say that bees were domesticated? I mean they're, they're not docile like cows.

Jerry Hayes [00:21:08] Well we've, we had to change. So this is, this is another interesting things. Did, did, do we keep bees alive or do the bees use us to keep themselves alive? It's one of those, it's

Vance Crowe [00:21:22] A very Michael Pollen way of looking at things. Yeah,

Jerry Hayes [00:21:24] No, it really, it really is. And so, and we'll probably talk about these parasites and honeybee health issues now, whereas honeybees could swarm reproduce and live in a hollow tree someplace, or the wall of a house or someplace in the natural environment and, and forge on flowers in the area and basically take care of themselves in the past because of these big parasites that we'll probably talk about the mite now they turned into livestock because if they're not taken care of, they'll die in 18 months or so because of these, these parasites. And, and so that whole dynamic has, has changed and, and their value has changed as well.

Vance Crowe [00:22:06] What's the history of beekeeping in general, like humans? How long, I mean, I, I I've read things about you finding honey in, in pyramids, but what, what's the backstory there?

Jerry Hayes [00:22:16] Yeah, so the backstory is our ancestors in Europe primarily and in in other places as well, found these insects that stored surplus food for themselves and we figured out how to steal it from them. So that was, that was free food. That was a good deal. You know, if, if you don't have, if you don't have sugar, if you don't have anything else, and then you can open up this tree and get pounds of, of honey and that's, that's a good deal. And, and so this has been going on for tens of thousands of years and

Vance Crowe [00:22:54] For anybody that doesn't know honey is created by bees for what reason?

Jerry Hayes [00:22:59] Yeah. So, so let me back up because everything, at least to me, everything has a linear story to it. Two different kinds of plants. We have wind pollinated, we're gonna talk about pollination, wind pollinated plants and insect pollinated plants. So wind pollinated plants, you know, I got corn and you can got pine trees and, and you've probably seen it on your car this spring. Sometimes it's all yellow and dusty in the morning. That's from pine trees and what have you that make a lot of this pollen. Basically release it into the air and hope it lands on the right flower part on another pine tree so that a seed can be produced in a pine cone and then that pine tree can reproduce. There are some other plants that decided, well, you know, this takes a lot of time and energy to do this and I can't get up, I can't pull myself out of the ground and that's a good looking plan over there. I wanna have sex with her and I can't do it. So how do I get my pollen over to her so that we can reproduce? And somehow they decided they would talk to an insect, a different species and say, I'll tell you what, I'll give you some nectar, just sweet sugary liquid. And you can take some of my pollen too 'cause it's got some protein in it, but I want you to take most of it over there to that flower over there so that we can pollinate, get, release my sperm in the, in the pollen to fertilize that embryo to make a seed so that I can have baby plants.

Jerry Hayes [00:24:36] So this sugary liquid, this nectar is what bees collect in excess. And when they figured out how to go from Africa to Europe, they had to figure out how to make it through winter months and months and months. There's no flowers blooming, there's nothing there. What, what do we do? So they figured out how to store large amounts of this honey, maybe 50, 60, 70 pounds of this to make it through winter till spring came and they wouldn't die.

Vance Crowe [00:25:07] That is amazing. You know, the, the, I, I'd never really considered the fact that the, the bees evolved or co-evolved with pollinators because the, the pollinators weren't like hanging out, waiting for flowers to begin doing that. And the, and vice versa. So you have to have this,

Jerry Hayes [00:25:24] We have have this, yeah, you have to have this agreement. And this is fascinating to me, this agreement, this relationship between a plant, one species and an insect, another species. So you're talking about two different species getting along. We're one species we can't even get along. How do you get two species totally different to get along? I think it's fascinating.

Vance Crowe [00:25:46] And then it, it clearly changed the landscape, right? Because then once you have that, then you have wild flowers and you, they can grow up in the mountains and, and so, and I guess it's not just bees, there are other pollinators, but,

Jerry Hayes [00:25:58] Well, yeah, no, well, yeah, there are other po So we're talking about honeybees, which are managed pollinators, which for a variety of reasons are good. But in, in the United States we have about 4,000 different species of other bees, solitary bees. They don't build up big colonies, big nests like our, our European bees. And then of course, you know, you've, you've got some specialized plants that might need a hummingbird to do it or or what have you. And, and you know, we all talk about, you know, butterflies and, and I probably shouldn't say this, you know, monarchs or pollinators, visualize a honeybee or bumblebee or what have you, you know, they're kind of small, fuzzy, furry, short legs. So they can become intimate with the flower. They can get into that farm and become intimate and get some of that pollen on their, their hair and their body, and then take that to the next flower. Think of a a butterfly. It's got really long legs, really long tongue because that butterfly doesn't want anything to do with that pollen on that flower. It has no mechanisms to get that off. It doesn't eat pollen. All it wants is that free nectar. So it wants to stay away from that flower as much as it can just to get energy.

Vance Crowe [00:27:15] No kidding. I'd never really thought about those. Long legs are a

Jerry Hayes [00:27:19] Separation.

Vance Crowe [00:27:21] Oh, and the bees are totally different because they're getting in there and they're, I've seen those really, really close up photos where the bee is like

Jerry Hayes [00:27:27] Covered,

Vance Crowe [00:27:28] Absolutely covered, yeah. In in pollen. Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [00:27:30] And

Vance Crowe [00:27:31] So in the US it's not just honeybees that are pollinating, there are other kinds of bees. Are they creating honey or just not very much like what's going on there?

Jerry Hayes [00:27:41] Yeah, so our honeybee colonies are, are, are, are call 'em a colony. There might be 50,000 individuals in a, in a honeybee colony. These, these boxes that you might have familiar with, most of the other bees are what we call solitary bees. A honeybee colony has one fertile female and she'll be the mother of all those in there. Solitary bees have a, a female, but she finds a, a location, whether it's in the ground or a hollow tube or hollow stick or something. And she'll lay some eggs in there and bring some pollen to those babies. But she doesn't build a colony. These bees don't get along, they don't do anything together. They're wonderful pollinators, but we really haven't learned how to manage them. These other 4,000 species, even even bumblebees, which we have learned how to manage the biggest bumblebee colony might be three or 400 individuals. It's not like honeybees, which are generalist pollinators. They're not looking for one particular kind of, of flower or plant. And, and so it's a little bit different.

Vance Crowe [00:28:53] So let's talk a little bit about specifically honeybees and those colonies. You're talking about how many bees are living in one of those. If I, if I'm driving by an orchard and I see one of those boxes, first of all, what's going on there and how many bees are there? What's happening?

Jerry Hayes [00:29:08] Well, and so the, the big event that maybe a lot of people have heard about and, and it had just been over with for a couple months is, is almond pollination in California almonds need honeybees. They, they can't get their pollen from point A to point B. So they have this relationship with these insects. There's about a million acres of almonds and it requires two honeybee colonies per acre to pollinate that move pollen from one flower to another so that the grower gets a a, a crop out of those. California produces 82% of the world's almonds. So it's, this is a, a big deal. So we got a million acres, 200 bee colonies, two per acre. So 2 million colonies. We only have about 2.5, 2.6 million colonies in the whole United States. So commercial beekeepers in this case load up about 450, 500 colonies on a semi. And we'll drive them from different places or location the United States to California at the right time. The grower will say, I want you to place these colonies in my, in my orchard, in my grove here. And what will happen is these bees are on pallets, on wooden pallets. They'll be unloaded by a forklift placed where the grower wants 'em. And then the bees do what they do. They go out and look for flowers, nectar and pollen. Which is neat because you can't pick up other insects, nests these other bees and move them like that.

Jerry Hayes [00:30:40] You can do this with honeybees. They'll adjust to time and temperature and pick up again. And so they may not be in some cases as efficient a pollinator as some of these others. But when you have this redundancy of having 30 to 50,000 individuals in there, you can get what you want out of 'em. And then you can move on to other crops by moving your bees around the country.

Vance Crowe [00:31:02] And so the almond farmers are, are then paying, they're, they're hiring somebody to bring those in. What does it cost to, to rent a

Jerry Hayes [00:31:09] About $200 a, a colony. But when you're, when you're looking at six to 8,000 pounds of almonds per acre and, and whatever the, the price of that is, which is not in insignificant, but you have to understand that in this case, bees are, are vital, they're necessary, but they're also just an overhead. They're no different to the grower than fertilizer or, or crop protection tools or irrigation or what have you. You know, these bees come in for two weeks or three weeks and, and then they leave and somehow the beekeeper is able to maintain them and build them up and do it again next year. But this is the weak link in their whole production chain.

Vance Crowe [00:31:54] And so once they're done with the almonds, then they move on. Is it a migration?

Jerry Hayes [00:31:59] Yeah. Then they'll go up to, you know, it might be Washington, Oregon for apples and cherries and berries and that kind of stuff. Some of them will go back because some of these bees have come from the east coast, from Florida, you know, a lot of commercial beekeepers will go to Florida or south Texas for the weather, kinda like people from New Jersey and manage their colonies and then drive them across the United States and then maybe go back to their home and then work their way north as spring goes north, winding up with cranberries up in Maine or something like that. And this is why about a third of our wait

Vance Crowe [00:32:32] Cranberries or B Polly. Oh my gosh.

Jerry Hayes [00:32:34] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:32:34] Yeah,

Jerry Hayes [00:32:35] Yeah. Just think of, just think of your grocery store, your big box or wherever your grocery store is, when you walk in that store, the first thing you see isn't the toilet paper aisle or the cleaning supply aisle, is it, what is the first one you see?

Vance Crowe [00:32:51] It's the produce,

Jerry Hayes [00:32:52] It's the produce aisle because that's where the color and taste and appeal is. And, and when you look at all those fruits and nuts and veggies, most of those have had a, a honeybee touch them. Even, even when we talk about lettuce or spinach or these, you know, green things that aren't like a fruit that we can think, what did the farmer have to plant? He had to plant a seed. And the only way that seed developed was because of pollination. So they help, they'll bring in honeybees to pollinate lettuce so that you get seeds so that they'll have a crop. So it's all tied together.

Vance Crowe [00:33:28] You know, I, I hear people talking about like how much of our food is pollinated by bees and it's become, at least in the agriculture, kind of science community, a little bit of a trope to me. Like it's, it, it has always seemed like, okay, yeah, the, the bees are really needed, but I've never heard it described that, you know, spinach and lettuce are also being pollinated or cranberries. This, that's, that's mind blowing to me.

Jerry Hayes [00:33:51] Well, yeah, no, and, and we, we are so lucky in this country to have the production that we have to have the access to food that we have at the, at really that the price that is available to us is, is a lot lower than other parts of the, of the world. And we take it for granted. We, we, yeah, it just happens and we worry about other things.

Vance Crowe [00:34:15] Okay? So if you have this agricultural system, it's all dependent. The, when I posted on, on Facebook and was asking for questions, it was like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Everybody wants to know about those two magic words colony collapse. And they wanna know are the bees as in danger as they, as they hear? And if they are, what should, what should they be doing to help? So I, I think you actually have quite a story about colony collapse that I think is, is interesting to, to think about and, and to break down.

Jerry Hayes [00:34:50] Well, yeah, and I'll give you the long version and just tell me to be quiet when you want me to be. But this thing called colony collapse disorder was, was found on my watch when I was the chief of the AP

Vance Crowe [00:35:01] Section in Florida.

Jerry Hayes [00:35:03] And so had beekeepers, commercial beekeepers calling me and saying that their bees were gone and the colonies were weakening. And you know how many times I'd heard that over the years just because of var mites and some other things. And I, you know, you listen appropriately and what have you. And this one beekeeper kept calling me and calling me and calling. So finally I thought I would just go out and look at his bees with him. And it was revelatory because he was absolutely right. The beads were gone, they weren't dead on the ground, they weren't like it was a pesticide poisoning. They were, they were just gone. It's like they'd been beamed up or something. And so I remember sitting on my floor bedroom floor at 10 30 at night in Florida talking to colleagues from USDA and universities and what have you. And, and we had talked about this before and they had gotten some reports and we had no earthly idea what was going on. So we thought we would call it a disorder and it would be gone like everything else in the beekeeping industry in, you know, in a year. Everybody forget about it. So we thought we'd call it colony collapse disorder. And golly, the media clamped on this like crazy. And it didn't go, I wish, I wish we hadn't called it a disorder now I wish we had called it something else. But anyway, we called it colony collapse disorder. And long story short, honeybees, when they're sick, they're altruistic, they want to protect their, their colony.

Jerry Hayes [00:36:47] They wanna protect their sisters because all the worker bees are, are sisters and they're, they're all females. That's how, that's kinda like our society. This whole society is run by females. And so those bees who are sick, I'm sick, so I'm gonna leave, fly out and I'm gonna die. I'm going to commit suicide and not come back because I'm sick and I might give something to my sisters. And so when you have a lot of bees in the colony that say I'm sick, they each make this individual decision to fly out, sacrifice themselves and not come back. So the colony population drops dramatically over maybe a couple weeks it might take to do this, but it drops. But there's no dead bees like some issue happened or what have you. They're just gone. And so we, you know, have figured out over time, you know, what is going on and what has happened. But over the years, remember I told you that honeybee swarm maybe once or twice a year, well, beekeepers can do what? An artificial swarm it's called a split or a divide. They can take one live colony and artificially divide it and make two out of it. So if you say you have a a thousand honeybee colonies and for one reason or another 500 of them die, you can take that other 500, divide them and you're up to a thousand. Again, your colonies might not meet the preconditions for a pollination contract 'cause they're weak and they have to be built up, but you can replace those bees.

Jerry Hayes [00:38:28] And so what commercial beekeepers are doing now is they're splitting and dividing all year long 24 7, 365, knowing that they're probably gonna lose 30 to 40% of their colonies. So they're doing it all year long and building in some extra. So now we actually have more honeybee colonies in the United States than we have had in several decades because of that. That is now, is that, is that a good model? Is that a great way to do it? No, that's, that's done out of fear, but that's where we're at right now.

Vance Crowe [00:39:01] Okay. So there are more bees now than there were when, when you guys sat around and named colony collapse disorder. But that still doesn't explain what, what's going on with colony collapse disorder.

Jerry Hayes [00:39:13] So if, and I've done this to you before, but humor me anyway, make a fist, put this fist on you someplace anyway, whatever you wanna do it anyway. So this fist represents the varroa mite varroa, destruct mite. This is a parasite of honeybees and it was accidentally introduced in the United States. It's a parasite on an Asian species of bee that made its way to Europe and United States. And so it's everywhere in the world now. And this mite is kind of like a mosquito. It's when it bites a honeybee, it's it's vectoring or giving that honeybee viruses and, and has some immune system issues and infects nutrition and what have you. So if we don't keep this varroa mite under control, that's where I said that a honeybee colony is livestock now because if they swarm and go out on their own and nobody is managing for this varroa, they'll be dead in, in a year or so because of all the implications from having this huge parasite on them. Think of you having a parasite on you the size of a rat. It's a big deal.

Vance Crowe [00:40:35] So why are the, the, the varroa mites coming outta the woodwork now? What, what, what happened? Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [00:40:41] Well, it's not outta the woodwork. We've had them for about 30 years now and they just have dominated the scheme. And the, the, the interesting thing is, the only thing that we really have the control mites are pesticides. So beekeepers have to put pesticides in a colony to kill or her or damage a little bug on a big bug. And there's some data out there that shows that 40% of all chemical residues that are in the beehive are the ones we beekeepers put in to keep this roa mite under control. If we hadn't kept the varroa mite under control, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation because I have no earthy idea how apples and strawberries and cranberries and peaches and everything else would've been pollinated on the scale that we have in commercial agriculture because there wouldn't have been anything to pollinate them. We would have had to access those from other countries or other places or gone or gone without. And, and so keeping this varroa mite under control has been the ultimate. And this is where, you know, these beekeepers are splitting and dividing all the time in order to keep their colonies built up, knowing that they're still gonna lose some from the implications of royal mites.

Vance Crowe [00:42:04] I guess I never, I never realized in all the times that we talked, you know, you, I know that pesticides, whether they're insecticides or herbicides or fungicides are all important. But I, I guess I never really considered the deep importance of insecticides on this important link in the chain, in the food chain of if you lose honeybees to a varroa might, you've got real problems in the overall system. Is there, are there other things that can be used besides insecticides

Jerry Hayes [00:42:36] For commercial beekeepers? So the largest commercial, when I say commercial beekeepers, people that do this for an actual living, this is their business. The largest commercial beekeeper in the United States has a hundred thousand colonies, a hundred thousand of those stacks of boxes. And there's lots with 20,000 and 10,000 and 8,000 and what have you. And so in, in my mind, as a backyard beekeeper myself with 15 colonies in my backyard out in the country, I can, I can be a pretty good beekeeper manager because I have the time and the resources to go out and look in those 15 colonies and kind of take 'em apart because you just can't look at, well, it's not, you know, if you're the, if you're a corn grower or an apple grower or a lettuce grower, you can walk through your fields and look at the leaves and kind of see what's going on. And then if you need to do something, everything's out in the open beehives. They're all contained in these cavities, these boxes. It's all dark in there. How do you know what's going on in there? And actually open them up and take 'em apart and do some sampling and what have you. You have a hundred thousand colonies, you can't do that. You have 10,000 colonies. You can't do that. So in my mind, and I don't mean to sound bad, those guys aren't beekeepers, that's production agriculture. And you have to treat that model a little bit differently in order to support other parts of production agriculture.

Vance Crowe [00:44:05] Man, this is, do, do you find that when you, so you have spent the last, well, we met each other because we were both working at Monsanto.

Jerry Hayes [00:44:13] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:44:13] And we spent the last four years of our lives, or or four you, how long were you there?

Jerry Hayes [00:44:19] 30 years? No, I wasn't, I was only there six years sometimes that something like 30

Vance Crowe [00:44:22] Years. Okay. I I guess you had gotten there a couple years before me. Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [00:44:25] But

Vance Crowe [00:44:25] We both spent a lot of time going out and talking with the broader public who had fears about variety of things. I purposefully avoided answering any questions about bees. Nobody cared what I thought

Jerry Hayes [00:44:36] About bees.

Vance Crowe [00:44:37] But if you were going out, right, You know, first time I ever saw you speak was at the Aspen Ideas Festival and it was a room filled with people deeply, deeply concerned about the dangers of bee. Like what's gonna happen to the bees colony, collapse, neonics, all these things. So let's talk a little bit about your experience doing this work. One, why are people so concerned and why do they feel such a strong connection with honeybees? I, I, I mean, like, I really was astounded when I put it up on Facebook. So many people commented with questions, why do people feel so closely connected with bees?

Jerry Hayes [00:45:18] I I think some of it is, is age related. And I think some of it is passed down concerned about their environment. A lot of people look on honeybees perhaps, and maybe monarchs that get a lot of attention as kind of the canary in the, in the coal mine. They're the ones that are, are informing us of what's going on in the environment and if they're sick or having some problems. What is that saying about our environment that if it can't support an insect, what's it going to happen to us based on, on that? And, and so we've had a a well, for instance, when I was in Florida, we registered and inspected all beekeepers in Florida because beekeepers were so important to Florida agriculture, it grows a lot of fruits and vegetables and you needed healthy honeybee colonies. We had about 800 beekeepers when I first started in Florida when I left in 2011 there because of colony collapse disorder and the media attention and what you just said about people paying attention, there were 5,000 registered beekeepers. And then the guy who replaced me, I talked to him a little while ago, and there's 8,000 registered beekeepers. So this has grown phenomenally because of people's concern with the environment. And most of these beekeepers are probably, I hate to say this, my age, the kids are grown.

Jerry Hayes [00:46:51] They sold the SUV and they read the Mother Earth News in 1975 and they wanted to save the world back then, but life took over and now they can save the world again. And so they've picked honeybees.

Vance Crowe [00:47:04] And do you feel like their fear is misplaced or the, the concern that they have? Like how, how do you, as, as a person that's an expert, you're in here all the time, somebody tells you I'm really worried. Do you tell them like they're there? Don't, don't be wor like what, what's your response to this?

Jerry Hayes [00:47:22] No, I think I, well I I think we're, we're on a, we're on a, a tightrope with honeybees because yes, we have these chemical control products that will keep varroa kind of in check if you're on your game as a beekeeper manager. But if you don't have those controls or the, or the mites develop resistance to them or what have you, the whole game changes. And, and so what I think these things are good for everybody asking me questions is no, I don't try to belittle it or poo pooh it because honeybees are, are this connection to the environment. They're part of the environment. It makes the environment work. And so not that people have to go out and hug, hug a honeybee, but if they know that they need to be asking more questions about the environment, how it's treated, how they treat it, how they look on it, I think those are all good things.

Vance Crowe [00:48:21] And I got quite a few questions about what can I do if I wanna help the bees? Should I be, you know, creating honeybee habitat or something like that? What, so so what would be a good thing people can do?

Jerry Hayes [00:48:33] Yeah, in fact, yesterday I was, I did a, a small blurb. Yesterday was World Pollinator day. And so I had a radio station,

Vance Crowe [00:48:42] Oh gosh, I didn't even call you Jerry, I'm sorry. Gotcha.

Jerry Hayes [00:48:46] I had a, a radio station in San Francisco call me and, and ask me questions for like three to five minutes. And they asked exactly the same question, which you can expect from, you know, those people in California That are thinking about all this stuff, probably more than we are here in the Midwest. But, and so this is what I told them is that we have 40 million acres of suburban lawns in the United States taking 80 million pounds of chemicals per year and 10,000 gallons of water each above and beyond rainfall to make them look like the 18th hole at Augusta and grass. And regardless of what, you know, the, the commercials on TV say in springtime grass is, is a, a resource black hole. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't produce anything that feeds. I mean, we don't have cows eating our grass. They don't produce flowers. You know, I saw a commercial last night that was for this product. You put it on your lawn, it makes it green and it kills all the dandelions. Well, I'm sorry, I love dandelions because honeybees love dandelions. And so it's, it's one of those kind of things that I think to get to your point, I think I was at, at Aspen, as you said, and I, I think I mentioned this as well, and I, and, and I had this young couple come up to me that make a lot more money than I did. And they said, oh, I heard you and it was great and what have you. We just called our landscaper to come out and pull up our front yard and plant flowers.

Jerry Hayes [00:50:20] And I was thought, oh my gosh, somebody actually listened to me. I don't, I don't want everybody to do that. But there's those places in your backyard and next to your driveway or the walkway into your house that you could plant flowers and things and stuff that will help not only honeybees, but other pollinators and maybe butterflies and what have you. But grass is just a big frigging waste of time.

Vance Crowe [00:50:41] Wow. All right. Well let's hope there's no turf grass producers just screaming at the,

Jerry Hayes [00:50:46] If, if they do have 'em, gimme a call.

Vance Crowe [00:50:50] So Jerry, you've been around bees a lot longer than just the passing fascination and the, and the environment. What, what do you think are the interesting things about bees that you, you know, if you're, if you're talking with somebody and you think, well, you think bees are interesting, now wait till you hear about this.

Jerry Hayes [00:51:10] I, I think bees are interesting because they have societies of cooperation. You have 50,000 bees when they emerge. They all have different jobs based on their age. When they first emerge, they're what we call a nurse bee, and they take care of and feed their baby sisters, and then they progress to a house cleaning bee, which cleans up the mess, the, and the detritus that's there and drags it outside. And then there's bees that later on will go out and forge and look for nectar pollen. And then there's bees that protect the colony. And there is certainly individual decisions, but there's also colony decisions. There's this decisions, there's this cooperation that we're all going to do this together and, and this is how we're going to do that. And I think for an insect with the brain, the size of a period, at the end of a sentence, that's outstanding. You know, and, and we're putting, we're learning from this insect with our two pro brain and we're not doing very well.

Vance Crowe [00:52:22] Yeah. So how, how are, how do they do this? How, how does cooperation work in a hive? And, you know, you made a point to me one time that really was kinda shocking was that most of their activities done in this hive, and it is pitch black, dark. It's

Jerry Hayes [00:52:36] Dark, it's totally dark in that hive. And so they communicate one with odors, certain odors have certain meaning. Okay, let's say that you're at home and your wife is out at work and you decide to make chocolate chip cookies and your wife comes in that front door and she smells chocolate chip cookies. She knows what's going on that

Vance Crowe [00:53:01] I haven't been working all day.

Jerry Hayes [00:53:03] Yeah, exactly. But you know, those odors mean different things. And so they, they communicate with odors and then they also communicate with movements and vibrations. They have various dances that they do to inform their sisters of where food might be outside of the colony. They have other motions and vibrations that they do in a colony.

Vance Crowe [00:53:26] So let's talk about those movements because I mean, I can remember going to the zoo and, and reading about the, you know, the bee waggle in, in my weekly reader or whatever that was ranger rick, but it never really made sense to me. So the, the bees are sitting there watching it and saying, okay, it's a left at the dandelion and, and go straight towards the o towards the oak tree. Like what's going on there?

Jerry Hayes [00:53:48] Yeah. So you have these bees that are scout bees that leave the colony to go out and find food for their sisters. And there might be, golly, 10, 20, 30, 40 of these things go out. And some might go to the left and some might go straight and some might go behind and they all might find something different. And so what they'll do is they'll come back to the, they'll take samples of those flowers, they'll fly back to the colony and they'll share some of those samples, say, this is what it tastes like. And then they'll do a dance. And this is amazing too. It's all oriented to the sun, but they're in a dark hive, aren't they? So there's telling everybody, here's the sun, and if you go this far in that direction and it tastes like what I just gave you, you found the stuff. And so there might be all these bees in there doing all these recruitment dances, trying to get their sisters to go where they have found this resource. And so their sisters will go out and say, okay, well there's the sun and so I'm gonna go this way and find this flower. The interesting thing is that while they're out doing all this stuff, this sun has moved, they can make the mental calculation in their mind

Vance Crowe [00:55:07] That

Jerry Hayes [00:55:07] The sun has moved this much and still find their way back home. I, I mean, this is a bug, gimme a break.

Vance Crowe [00:55:13] And, and, and they're then choosing like which, which flour they're gonna go towards, or which,

Jerry Hayes [00:55:20] Yeah, so, so every flour nectar has different sugar proportions in it. I I told you I like dandelion because it might have 30 to 40% sugar in it. Pears, for instance, are really hard to get pollinated because generally they only have seven to 10% sugar. So this is why orchard growers try to eliminate dandelions on the orchard floor because all the bees will go to the dandelions,

Vance Crowe [00:55:47] Just like a little kid's soccer game where the, it's exactly, it's exactly. So

Jerry Hayes [00:55:50] They come back and they say, this is, this is the nectar I found, and it's really, really sweet and it's over there. And so they're looking, they're looking to be the most efficient food collection wise, and they compete in that way. But

Vance Crowe [00:56:04] Who is making, there's no central authority making these decisions for the bees, right? There's nobody standing up and saying, all right, you crowd over here, you're going over, over to the west and you're going over to the east. How does this large, how do all these tiny decisions stack up to a large decision?

Jerry Hayes [00:56:21] You know, it's almost like crowdsourcing for us. You know, we, we've all seen the data and you get on social media and or you watch, watch one of these game shows on TV or something like that where people call their their cousin or call their what have you and ask their the, the question and what have you. It's the same thing. The bees are making a collective decision, which is interesting because this is an insect. How are they communicating what this decision is? And then they're following through on it based on the best data that they have based on these bees leaving this dark box, going out and saying, here's some flowers, or we're going to reproduce a sexually reproduce, we're going to split our colony. And I found this hollowed tree two miles over in this direction. So I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll all leave the colony, all you guys who wanna come with me to swarm and we'll, we'll wait over here on this branch, get organized, and then we'll head over to that hollow tree. That's what's going on.

Vance Crowe [00:57:29] And as they've divided out their tasks, are you born And, and just whatever chemical you're exposed to gives you the task. I mean, how, how are the, are the eggs different?

Jerry Hayes [00:57:40] It's no. Yeah. So you got workers who develop from fertile female eggs. All right, let me back up. So remember we talked about the virgin going out to a drain congregation area and mating with, let's say 20 different drones. She has an organ in her body called a spermatheca kind of balloon. And so the sperm from those drones will be stored in that spermatheca kind of in layers. When she lays an egg, she has the option of releasing some of that sperm to fertilize that egg and make a worker or not, and letting that egg pass by, because drones come from unfertilized eggs. They're haplo, they only have half the number of chromosome. Whoa. So she makes that decision. So the workers are all females. Now what happens if the queen all of a sudden, you know, grabs her chest and falls over and dies, they have to replace her. So those nurse bees will select a very, very young larvae and start feeding it royal jelly, which is a high protein food that they make in their heads in a gland in their head called a hypo pharyngeal gland feed. That, and that food difference will allow, that was gonna be a female worker to be a female queen and develop ovaries because of diet. Those workers don't have fully developed ovaries or anything else.

Jerry Hayes [00:59:14] They're still females, but they can't reproduce lead way half. So you have workers, you have queens, and you have have drones in a, in a colony. And all of these drones are expendable, kinda like all males are. They're just, they're flying gametes. They're flying sperm. All they're there is to, you know, reproduce with a, a virgin queen if, if needed.

Vance Crowe [00:59:41] And, and I mean, I, I'm just kind of blown away by the fact that all of this can occur and they don't have language, or at least they don't have it in the way that we understand it.

Jerry Hayes [00:59:52] Yeah, they, yeah. This language that we've talked about with odors and language, with movement organizes the, the, the colony in a way that allows them to make these group decisions.

Vance Crowe [01:00:07] And how, how much of this has been learned? How much of this was known when you went to school at, at Ohio State, and how much of this is new knowledge?

Jerry Hayes [01:00:18] I think probably 90% of this was already known. I think over the years. Of course, the, the fine tuning of this and how this might happen at, at, at a, a smaller molecular level and whether have you has been learned. But the, the actual fundamentals of it have been known for a long time. We just know a little bit more about it and, and I think, and have an appreciation for this society that can make these decisions. It's, it's amazing.

Vance Crowe [01:00:52] So, Jerry, we, as I've referenced it a couple of times, we worked at Monsanto together and one of the things that Monsanto did not sell, at least I don't think we did, but we, we heard a lot about were neonicotinoids and that, that these were making the bees confused or they were killing the bees and that parts of Europe, and even in parts of Canada, they were banned. So let's talk about neonicotinoids first. What are they as a class of pesticide? What are they supposed to do and and how much did they impact bees?

Jerry Hayes [01:01:26] So neonics, as you could imagine from the word neo new and oid nicotine, you know, a lot, most, most plants produce toxins to protect themselves from bad bugs. Tobacco does this, and one of the things it produces is nicotine to produce, protect itself from

Vance Crowe [01:01:47] Yeah. People don't realize that things like nicotine and caffeine that we use as stimulants are, are actually insecticides for the plants.

Jerry Hayes [01:01:55] Yeah, no, and it's amazing. And that we will consume less than a toxic dose of these to get this, you know, cognitive change in our, our brains, which I find fascinating as well. Why, why, why people do that. But anyway, yeah. So plants produce all sorts of chemicals to protect themselves. Some researchers found a way to take this nicotine and produce it to, into a a, a chemical pesticide. The neat thing about it, neonics are a little bit different, is they have super duper low mammalian toxicity when they're used at these field, what we call field relevant dosages. So low mammalian toxicity. And they kill bugs really, really well if they're misused. And when I say misused, if they're applied, when a plant is blooming, those neonics can get into the pollen and the nectar. And if bees collect those and take them back to the colony, they can have, of course, adverse effects on the bees. Or if the bees are out and it's flowering and, and the the farmer, the grower sprays them while the bees are also flying and they get it on 'em, it'll kill them too. It's supposed to. It's a pesticide, it's supposed to, it's supposed to do that. Very rare though, that they do anything to bees when they're used according to label directions.

Jerry Hayes [01:03:27] But there again, it's like a lot of other things. Our our politicians, our regulators, what have you, many times don't look at or listen to the science. They listen to the voters. And the voters may be ignorant about these things. So can they kill bees? Can they hurt bees? Absolutely. If they're misapplied or what have you. But they have low mammalian toxicity. So if they're removed, well, for instance, they were removed a couple years ago from use in, in England on canola, which is is mustard canola oil and, and what have you. The next year they lost 40% of their crop because they didn't have a product that would control the canola flea beetle.

Vance Crowe [01:04:17] 40%.

Jerry Hayes [01:04:18] Yeah. And so, so even if the neonics were replaced, they would have to be replaced with older chemicals that might have mammalian toxicity, or it might be, you know, 1960s kind of stuff that is harsher than what we have now. So there is this balance that we have to achieve. Yes, we want to have things that allow us to produce all this wonderful food. You know what, what, what's the figure? I read the other day, 40% of our food in the US is, is wasted. We have 40% food waste. We can do that because we have so much. But how do, how do you, how do you balance this, this our wonderful agriculture that produces all this stuff and also protect what we wanna do to protect the environment? So this is, this is, this is a difficult place to go.

Vance Crowe [01:05:09] So Jerry, I have to ask why is, why is the, the way that the public perceives bees dying or that neonics are terrible to the point that they're banning them? There must have been farmers saying, no, no, don't do this. And probably even people in the agricultural, regulatory world saying, Hey, this is gonna cause big problems. What is going on? That this is driven into society to the extent that they go ban chemicals?

Jerry Hayes [01:05:37] Well, I, I I think it's called confirmation bias. We all have preconceived notions based on what we think we've learned and read and, and our social groups and, and who we know at work and on social media. And we all have, you know, do you, do you talk with people who disagree with you all the time? Probably not. Neither do I. So we, we talk to people who have similar views as we do. And so when you have all these groups that have preconceived notions about what something is gonna do, and they have loud voices and the media picks it up and reports it, there again, I'm, I'm sorry, politicians will wanna keep their job too, and the voters and what have you. And so it's no big deal to them because we have somehow figured out how to produce enough food all the time. But now we're going from 17 billion to 20 to who knows how many billion in the, in the future.

Vance Crowe [01:06:42] Oh, 7 billion to nine

Jerry Hayes [01:06:43] To 9 billion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of people. And so it's, yeah, it's, this is a great question because what, what do you do? How do you produce enough food when there's people starving now? And we're watching, you know, you and I are watching the six o'clock news and, and watching kids with swollen bellies someplace because they're not getting enough food. And I just scraped a half a plate of spaghetti in the trash 'cause I was full.

Vance Crowe [01:07:10] Okay. So, you know, you're talking about things that people are afraid of, right? That were killing all the bees, or, you know, the, the opposite, which is we don't have enough food. You used to have a sign on your office wall that I I it really spoke to me. It do you remember it? The,

Jerry Hayes [01:07:27] Well, I have several. I, because I like signs Which one was about

Vance Crowe [01:07:30] Fair? The one that was drawn? Yeah, the one that was drawn by. Was that one of your children that do that? Yeah. So so tell me what that was and why you hung that up.

Jerry Hayes [01:07:37] Yeah, so had a daughter who got old enough, she wanted to move out and, and she did. And I was kind of cleaning up and tidying up the junk. She left in her room. And I found this, this handwritten sign on a piece of notebook paper that, you know, said basically that, you know, fear wasn't real. It, it wasn a choice. Danger is real, but fear is a choice. And when it's a choice, what does that result in? If it's not based on anything?

Vance Crowe [01:08:14] I mean, it, it's a profound thought because then you start saying, if I'm afraid and I'm choosing to be afraid, can I choose not to be afraid?

Jerry Hayes [01:08:22] Yeah. No, you can choose not to be afraid. But I think, I think individuals, it's very hard for individuals to buck the system. You and I are no longer employees of Monsanto. So that says something about us. Others are, and they're not picking on 'em because they have to take care of families and they have medical things and what have you. But to, to actually buck the system in that way or in your social group, you know, disagree with something. These things are hard to do for most people. 'cause we all like to be liked. We all want to be included. We want them be invited to the ball game. I mean, and so as, as humans, we have a lot of, a lot of frailties. And, and one of 'em is, is we're a lot of times we're lemmings.

Vance Crowe [01:09:15] So you, you struck me the whole time that we worked together as somebody that was gonna do what he thought was, was right. And, and you know, just kind of going on your own path. Were you that way all the way from childhood? Were you, was this something deeply ingrained in you, or how did you become this way? Because it, it definitely makes you stand out. I actually think it's probably why people, even though you were the B guy that worked for Monsanto,

Jerry Hayes [01:09:44] It's

Vance Crowe [01:09:44] A big reason why I think people listen to you because they could sense that you were gonna do what you were gonna do.

Jerry Hayes [01:09:51] Yeah. You know, and certainly it's how you're brought up. My dad was in the Coast Guard, actually, we moved every three years. So I was always the new kid in school. So I learned how to be part of the group, but not be part of the group because I was gonna move. It didn't really make any difference to me. So I always tried to, to do the right thing. And in this particular case with Monsanto, they had some great ideas on how to help honeybee health using a new technology. And you know, at that time everybody hated Monsanto. But you know, they had the money, they had the smart people, they had the expensive equipment. And this is why we have big corporations because sometimes they can add real value to our lives, and we can look around us now and see all the stuff that we can buy and get and do. So I thought, you know, even though they were disliked, I would stick my neck way outside of my shell because we were going to use their money and abilities to try to see if we could help honeybee health. And I knew on the other hand that they were also using me to bring a smiley face to Monsanto, which was okay, this was a trade off. So long as we knew, we both knew what was going on and what the goal and direction was. That was, that was fine. And, and so, but you know, and as you know, you always have people that are, are trying to get you to, you know, to, to do other things. And I teed off a lot of people there because I wasn't gonna do 'em.

Vance Crowe [01:11:26] And as you, as you think about your time and putting your, so you, you came to Monsanto as a person that was well established in the BE community and it probably had a pretty, well, I don't wanna speak for you. When I came to Monsanto, I had family members write me and say, this is a terrible decision. I had good friends, I had had people that had, you know, spent, stayed over in my house and wrote me and said that I was Judas. Right. It was like one of the, the craziest things that had happened to me until that point in my life. Later things, crazier things have happened. But at that time it was a big deal. Was it the same for you? Did people have a strong negative reaction when you came into the company?

Jerry Hayes [01:12:09] So, two different issues there, because when I was offered the job, I was at a beekeepers meeting, the Caribbean Beekeepers Association in Grenada. And so I was with some friends from USDA who were speaking and universities and what have you. And I told 'em, Hey folks, this is, this is the deal. What do you think? And when

Vance Crowe [01:12:29] You asked a group of people, oh

Jerry Hayes [01:12:30] Yeah, you just, yeah. And, and they, you know, after they thought about it, they said, yeah, you, you, you gotta do it. As, as awkward as it seems and what have you. Now the rank and file beekeepers who are wonderful there again, confirmation bias. I had people, you know, the, probably the first year or so, you know, sitting in the audience with their arms folded and get up and walk out and all that other kind of stuff. And you just have to, to tell the truth and, and be sincere. And that's all I could do.

Vance Crowe [01:13:09] Do you, do you have any stories that you look back on from, from speaking when, when you had confrontation that that was unexpected?

Jerry Hayes [01:13:19] No, not really because sometimes it got a little, a little seemingly hot and you could tell there was some people in the audience frustrated. But I was super, super fortunate because most of the time, you know, organizers of those meetings or the president of the beekeepers association would jump in and, and, and save me and, and, you know, ask that person, you know, to, to be nicer or to leave.

Vance Crowe [01:13:47] Wow.

Jerry Hayes [01:13:48] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:13:48] Yeah. I I was surprised that for me, I had, I only had a couple of experiences where things went sideways and even out of it, it, it ended up being a much more pleasant or good or enriching experience than than ever. So I think that's a big part of why that fear sign meant so much to me, because I could stand on a stage and while there are a lot of people that are afraid to go give a speech, imagine that you are representing one of the most controversial, you don't have to, but, but the listeners, maybe you are representing one of the most controversial companies in the entire world. And what people are going to question is your integrity,

Jerry Hayes [01:14:30] Which

Vance Crowe [01:14:30] Is for me, everything for, you know, like who do, do I believe what I say and am I who I say that I am, which is the reason that the company was willing to pay me to go out and speak is because I had integrity and they wanted to have somebody go out and communicate with the broader public. And so to have somebody stand down in the crowd and try and cut down the stage is really unsettling. But at the end of the day, I had to learn what do I really believe?

Jerry Hayes [01:15:02] What

Vance Crowe [01:15:02] Do I actually think? It's what drove me to spending time with people like Doug Salmons who, who you know, and Dr. Fred Perla or, or you, you know, where I would come into the room and be like, okay, okay, what's really going on here? I can read the papers to some extent, but how should I understand this information? And I don't think most people have in their lives a chance to really know over and over and over again, what would I do if I were put in a hot situation like this and that that was my life for five years.

Jerry Hayes [01:15:35] Yeah. Well, no, and you also have to understand that I think you and I and some others are in different positions that we were in that ambassadorial position between Monsanto and the rest of the world. And we had a passion, really. And, and I don't mean to minimize that. I think passion, when you're all in the game for what you believe is different, most people in big corporations aren't, you know, if you told them, you know, set yourself on fire for the bonus, they would probably do it because they're, they're just, they're worker bees. They're, they're, they're not actually having a passion. They're smart. They might be an accountant, they might be doing this, but there are puzzle pieces that can be replaced at any time.

Vance Crowe [01:16:24] Well, and what I came to realize, and I'd seen this summit at the World Bank was that for me, I've always wanted my work and my life to be lined up probably to the extent that it's a detriment in my, in my family. But having that, those two things line up and be my passion is what I wanted. There are a lot of people in corporate America, they're there because I have to do this in order that the other parts of my life, I get what I want. You know,

Jerry Hayes [01:16:50] It's money,

Vance Crowe [01:16:51] Spend time with my family and it's

Jerry Hayes [01:16:52] Money.

Vance Crowe [01:16:52] Yeah, okay. It's money. Fair, fair enough. Yeah. And there, but that is a part of life, right? Yeah. You have to eat,

Jerry Hayes [01:16:57] You have

Vance Crowe [01:16:57] To have a shelter.

Jerry Hayes [01:16:58] Sure.

Vance Crowe [01:16:59] And, and that passion was the thing I really did not imagine when I came into Monsano that something would be kicked off in my brain saying, wait a second, if you don't stop people from being afraid of where their food comes from, all

Jerry Hayes [01:17:14] Hell

Vance Crowe [01:17:15] Breaks loose, bad, bad things happen.

Jerry Hayes [01:17:18] And

Vance Crowe [01:17:18] Then that passion carried into everything.

Jerry Hayes [01:17:20] Well, I'm, I'm amazed at, at, at Monsanto in this particular case and, and others that super smart people, they do really good science as far as I can tell. They produce products that work well for the customer and the customer buys 'em. And that's why they're so valuable. But they do such a horrible job with telling their story. And, and so I I, I never figured that one out because they do some good things. But then, you know, and I remember some things coming up in the news about bees and what have you, and, you know, 'cause I had to go through the, the, you know, tell somebody who told somebody else, who told somebody else. And, and by time somebody had three meetings and everything else, it was a week later and it was passed. Nobody could actually make a decision in real time.

Vance Crowe [01:18:17] That, I mean, that's really true. And I, when I was in the position, I would write people all the, all the way up to, to the president and, and, and really did not understand the bureaucracy. I mean, a couple of times people would come by and be like, yo,

Jerry Hayes [01:18:31] I know what do you, you're

Vance Crowe [01:18:33] Not supposed to do that. You write this person and then they write that person. Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [01:18:37] And,

Vance Crowe [01:18:37] You know, for better or for worse, it, it's, it definitely threw waves into the, into the whole system. And I'm, I probably would've, it took me a long time to figure out how to have good working relationships inside of a corporation because I thought, let's just go the fastest way possible. And it took me a long time to be a, corporations don't work like that. You can't have one gear going really fast and another gear going really slow. You're gonna shred something there, something's not gonna work. And that, that took me a long, long time in a corporation. Okay. So when you look back on, when you look back on your time where you were getting to work with the big equipment and you were putting your integrity on the line for another company, as you have left, you've been gone for,

Jerry Hayes [01:19:26] It'll be a year in July.

Vance Crowe [01:19:27] It'll be a year. Okay. How do you feel about that looking back on, on the time you spent

Jerry Hayes [01:19:32] Oh, no, the time I spent there, because there's wonderful people there, wonderful people there that do great work and, and you know, there's always a couple jerks here and there, but it was, for me, I had told myself that with this new project, that I would ride the project as long as I thought progress was being made and value was being created. When that changed or when that stopped, then I thought, well, my job is, is done. And, and there's no reason to, to stick around. You know, they, they, they pay you very well there so that they can keep you there. But that's not everything at the end of the day.

Vance Crowe [01:20:19] And so what are you doing now?

Jerry Hayes [01:20:20] So there's a small company be keeping supply company out of England called Vita, V-I-T-A-B Health. And they wanted to grow the market in North America. And, and I thought it would be kind of fun to be entrepreneurial now because they have a lot of natural or near natural products. So it's, I I kind of like, and so what I'm doing is trying to, yeah, doing everything you do as an entrepreneur, getting products out there and advertising and, and getting new distributors and all that kind of stuff,

Vance Crowe [01:20:55] And how, how's it going? You're no longer with a large corporation, you're with a, well, I mean, are they a large corporation? No,

Jerry Hayes [01:21:00] Golly, no, no. Uhuh.

Vance Crowe [01:21:02] So, so what is it like, how

Jerry Hayes [01:21:03] Do you like it? There are eight, eight people.

Vance Crowe [01:21:05] Oh, really?

Jerry Hayes [01:21:05] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:21:06] Well, that is a gotta be a big shock to the system.

Jerry Hayes [01:21:12] No, not, no, not really, because I've never, only time I looked at the size of the corporation was when I didn't understand a decision or a direction or what have you. All the other times I think I just had blinders on because I had a project and I wanted that project to move ahead as, as smoothly and successfully as possible. And now, you know, and, and research is like this. You never, you know, research is never a hundred percent wonderful and everything else. And, and so I, I wrote it as far as I could go there again with all the resources of Monsanto. And then when it stopped, it stopped short of where I had hoped it would be and no sense in doing anything else if it wasn't gonna bring any value.

Vance Crowe [01:22:09] So to, so to close this part of it up because we had kind of a shared bond there. You you were definitely a, a mentor to me and a person that taught me a great deal and, and was very supportive of me being my own person and, and saying what I believed even when it would get a little hard.

Jerry Hayes [01:22:26] No, but, but, but for me, you coming to Monsanto was a breath of fresh air because everybody knew what you were saying, but nobody wanted to say it. So to have someone come here with the knowledge, skills and abilities and the ability to stand in front of a, a crowd and express these positive ideas in this part of, of production agriculture was, was great. And I, I can't remember who hired you, but whoever hired you should be patted on the back,

Vance Crowe [01:23:01] Right? The, the, the thing that you said earlier about people having trouble telling their story, I, this is the, the key learning that I, I probably took away from this job that I had, which was the most amazing opportunity ever. It, it, it was several PhDs rolled into one.

Jerry Hayes [01:23:21] But

Vance Crowe [01:23:23] The, the key to telling your own story is that if you're gonna be the hero of that story, then you gotta tell people where you screwed up.

Jerry Hayes [01:23:33] Hmm. Right?

Vance Crowe [01:23:34] Like this, this concept that people can go out and tell, Hey, I am the hero of this story. I woke up and my shirt was tucked in and my hair looked really good and the whole day went great. And by the end of the day, the day was still great because I was the hero. Like, no one wants to hear that story. And because it doesn't teach you anything. And the only thing that I did that separated me from everybody else was that I was really willing to stand up and be like, I used to think this thing. And now I think that thing and, and the path that I went through to get to that thing over there required me to look stupid. And it, it caused me some suffering and this is what I was, was willing to give up to get over here.

Jerry Hayes [01:24:15] And

Vance Crowe [01:24:16] It, they, it's not magic. The reason people want to hear that story is 'cause they're like, I really don't wanna screw up the way he's telling me that he screwed up in the past. And I think that that's one of the biggest challenges that whether it's corporations or the ag industry or probably any industry, is you don't want to tell a story where you, you end up being either the screw up or potentially the villain during part of it. And, and I, I think that my willingness to you, I was the middle child of seven. So you were talking about growing up in the Coast Guard and how that, how that, you know, changed and molded you. Well, I was the middle child of seven and you know, you don't really walk out of there with a feeling of shame. You, you, you, you're embarrassed so many times Sure. That you're comfortable saying like, this is how I screwed up and this is what I'm going forward with.

Jerry Hayes [01:25:03] Yeah, yeah. No, you're, you're absolutely right. You know, most of us, and we all do this, we all have a, a problem with selfishness. Arrogance. We want to, there again, we wanna please society. We want to have all these cool things. And to put those kind of things like, you know, one B or C or D or even number two is, is hard in this society where we're judged by what we, what we got and, and how we, we perceive others wanna see us.

Vance Crowe [01:25:38] Yeah, I think so. So Jerry, you appear to me to be a very disciplined person and I find that to be, I'm, I'm, I'm always interested to hear how people come up with the routines that they have in their lives, the, the habits that they've built in. So tell me a little bit about how you view, you know, your routines every morning and, and how you, how you get so much done. It appears to me you get a lot done every day.

Jerry Hayes [01:26:07] Well, I'm, yeah, but by the same token, it is one of these things that, and, and I guess this is probably, I don't know if this is what type I am, A, B, or C or what have you. But habits, for me, good habits always allow me to, you know, create more, produce more and what have you. So yeah, I like habits. I, I get up at five in the morning, I do an hour of exercises. I have What

Vance Crowe [01:26:36] Do you do for exercise? Well,

Jerry Hayes [01:26:37] I have, I have three different routines. One is ooh, P 90 X yoga, and then I do a P 90 X abs. So the next day. And then I do some, just some free weights with dumbbells and stuff the third day and go through that rotation.

Vance Crowe [01:26:59] P 90 X is hardcore man that, that's, that's, that's not, that's, that's not like a elderly gym, you know, like,

Jerry Hayes [01:27:06] Yeah, no, it's, no, it's, it's, it's good. I, you know, I like it. And then I have the, basically the same breakfast every morning, have the same lunch every day. And yeah, so then I, I, yeah, I get in and get on the computer and have a, I have a list. I have a list and go through my list and yeah, it's not probably very, very glamorous, but try to get things done and, and obviously things jump in and things change and you gotta readjust and what have you. But I try to stay on course because I don't wanna waste a lot of time.

Vance Crowe [01:27:44] And as, as far as I can tell, no caffeine, no alcohol,

Jerry Hayes [01:27:48] No caffeine, no alcohol. I do like, I do like fig newton. So,

Vance Crowe [01:27:58] And, and the routines, this is something you always had, this is your father instilled it as a military man or,

Jerry Hayes [01:28:05] Yeah, yeah. No, I think so. I think, I think, and no, God, you're asking great questions here. So I remember I re when I was a boy, I remember in high school having some problems keeping track of things, homework and projects and what have you. And so I don't know who it was, it might have been my dad, but I, I went from trying to remember all this stuff to taking a piece of notebook paper and folding it appropriately so it would fit in my pocket and put English and math and what have you on that piece of thing and, and write down what I was supposed to do for homework or whatever for that day. And then of course, the next day I could turn it over and that would be Tuesday and then I could fold it the other way. So I would have everything I was supposed to do on one piece of paper for a week. And I know that sounds kind of goofy, but it worked for me and, and that just kind of extended it, it actually, I'm a visual creature. And so it actually helped to visualize what I had to do or was what I was supposed to do and made it easier for me. Actually,

Vance Crowe [01:29:17] You know, I had none of those habits. I, I was, I mean, I think that the one thing I had going for me is that I can remember a lot of things that are going on, it's episodic memory, but I, I never made lists, I never wrote things down. I didn't do that. I was in my thirties before I started that.

Jerry Hayes [01:29:36] No. And, and there again, being a visual creature, I I, when I'm thinking of things, I don't generally think in words or concepts. I think in pictures, I remember in college, university I studied a lot because I'm not that smart. And I remember being in exams and, and have a question come up and I could close my eyes and picture in the book or in my notes the answer and I would write it down.

Vance Crowe [01:30:06] That's pretty good. And what do you think about how your memory works or how you think about things with this thing that you love? Bees, right? So they appear to be very disciplined, but that all of their habits are deeply encoded in their, in their genes.

Jerry Hayes [01:30:23] And, and, and you know, the only thing that's been written more of than honeybees is religion. Did you know that?

Vance Crowe [01:30:31] No. Yes.

Jerry Hayes [01:30:32] And so tons of stuff have been written about honeybees, but when you think of a, an insect that can basically live from pole to pole in deserts and jungles in the Midwest and the urban environments and you know, honeybees are kind of like the possums of the insect world. They can live anywhere, you know? And, and when you think of that and you think of the genetic diversity that allows them to do that, and, and Darwin being in, in action, remember I told you that the, the, you know, the, the queen mates with say 20 different drones, honeybees aren't going for the genetic home run. They're going for the averages because if one drone sperm produces workers that are somehow sensitive to some bacterial disease, his sperm will be used up and then another drone sperm will be brought in. And so he might be resistant to that. So they're looking for those averages in those genetics, which allows them to survive anywhere.

Vance Crowe [01:31:34] And this is an interesting thing to think about when you're thinking about the strategies to make your life better, right? So you have the things, you know, that work and then you throw in a little bit of diversity. There was a book that I read one time called Algorithms to Live by. Oh wow. Have we ever talked about this? No,

Jerry Hayes [01:31:49] I don't think so.

Vance Crowe [01:31:50] So it's about, it's like a computer programmer saying, if you want to use what we've learned about programming computers, this is what you can do. And, and the thing that it talks about is explore versus exploit. And it says, you know, when you're doing certain search algorithms or certain operations, you wanna spend 60% of your time, well 40% of your time exploring, find new things, find new ways. So if you're, say for example, driving to work every day and now we have ways and apple maps or whatever, but you've got, you, you wanna say, which is path is the fastest. Well 40% of the time you should spend trying new paths and 60% of the time you should take the best one that you found so far. So that way you always have this kind of churn,

Jerry Hayes [01:32:37] But

Vance Crowe [01:32:37] You're getting the most out of the best one that you have so far.

Jerry Hayes [01:32:40] Yeah, no, and and I think that's true because, you know, if, if, you know, we, we haven't looked like this or lived like this for very long, you know, our ancestors were farmers and before that they were a hunter gatherers. And to be able to go out into the environment and be challenged by different directions or that deer was over there and we gotta go down here to the, I mean, that's amazing. I and, and we are the recipients of those genes that worked.

Vance Crowe [01:33:10] That's right.

Jerry Hayes [01:33:11] And, and I think that's incredible.

Vance Crowe [01:33:14] So I mentioned a book I want to ask you, is there a book you've read? Actually, I wanna put you on the spot because you, there are a lot of authors. So I, one time was out at MIT

Jerry Hayes [01:33:24] With

Vance Crowe [01:33:24] A, with a group of reporters and several of them knew who you were and a couple of them I think have written books about bees.

Jerry Hayes [01:33:32] Okay.

Vance Crowe [01:33:33] So I'm gonna put you on the spot and say if somebody on the, that's listening to this wants to read a really great book about bees, but they've only got time for one, which one should they read?

Jerry Hayes [01:33:46] There's a ton of books out there that are, are, are super good. Tom Sealey has written some wisdom of the Hive. There are are are other books out there, but the one I really like the most is there was a bee early beekeeping supply company that was called the Root Beekeeping Supply Company. And it was started by AI root in Medina, Ohio. And this guy was a type a entrepreneur. He had invented all sorts of stuff and Medina, Ohio, south of Cleveland. And at the time nothing happened. He started a magazine called B Culture Magazine and he had the only windmill that produced electricity in Ohio that ran the printing press. And when the wind was blowing at, at night at 2:00 AM in the morning, he and would make his kids get up and they would go because there was enough electricity to make the the printing press go for

Vance Crowe [01:34:51] B Culture magazine

Jerry Hayes [01:34:52] For B Culture magazine. And he had an electric car and he was one of the first, he first reported on the Wright Brothers from Ohio Fly. And so this guy was just amazing and not so much about bees. He loved bees and he knew everybody about bees and he invented equipment. But I'm more interested in personalities that make things happen rather than the things that happen. I like to know that process because you can learn so much from others.

Vance Crowe [01:35:22] That is a very good answer. So the, the name of the book is,

Jerry Hayes [01:35:25] Yeah, it's AI Roots autobiography.

Vance Crowe [01:35:28] Oh, very interesting. Yeah. So he wrote it himself. Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [01:35:31] So what he did was he wrote a, a chapter a month for his magazine and when he was done, he pulled all those together and turned it into a book.

Vance Crowe [01:35:43] So speaking of, of magazines you write for, for a magazine regularly, tell me a little bit about that.

Jerry Hayes [01:35:53] One of my early jobs was working for dad and Sun's beekeeping supply in Hamilton, Illinois, one of the largest manufacturers supplier of beekeeping equipment. They're very old too. 1863, they started from French immigrants that came over to West Central Illinois and so had an opportunity to, to go to work for them early on. And was there probably a year or so and the editor to the magazine's office was next to mine and I said his name was Joe Graham, just a wonderful guy. I said, Joe, what do you think if we do a question and answer thing for the A BJ? They had had one previously, but yeah, the guy left or something. And Joe said, sure. Joe was like this said, sure. So I've been doing that for about 35 years.

Vance Crowe [01:36:44] 35 years. Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [01:36:47] And

Vance Crowe [01:36:47] What do you, what types of questions do you answer?

Jerry Hayes [01:36:49] I have people, like people on Facebook, you have send me questions, email me questions, what have you about all sorts of different things and I answer 'em and I pick out the ones I like and put them in the American B Journal and yeah, I've been doing that for a long time.

Vance Crowe [01:37:07] Well, that's fantastic. So I think that we got through all of the questions that I had on Facebook or more or less. Okay. And you've been a wonderful guest. What the people wouldn't know because, and and it'll be two weeks past because we're gonna, we're gonna air this in a couple of weeks Okay. Is that there's a giant storm coming to St. Louis. Yes. So I've got to let you go, but you will absolutely be welcomed back. We have a lot more that we could talk about, not just with bees, but about just life in general and, and the world. But thank you so much for having me.

Jerry Hayes [01:37:39] But this is Missouri. I could, I mean we have tornadoes or we have hail the size of grapefruit. I'd be killed on the way home. That's

Vance Crowe [01:37:45] Well, and, and

Jerry Hayes [01:37:45] It could be all over with,

Vance Crowe [01:37:46] But we'll have this for posterity. We'll always have this interview. So Jerry Hayes, thank you so much

Jerry Hayes [01:37:51] For coming by here. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Vance Crowe [01:37:53] Thanks for listening to the podcast. I loved talking to Jerry Hayes. He is a long time friend of mine. He's been a mentor and he's taught me a lot about the way that you can take really concrete facts and turn them into stories that make people comfortable and confident that, that they're hearing in their understanding what's going on, particularly about a really complex subject like bees. I really enjoyed that. And if you did, just know that I'm gonna try every single week to bring podcast interviews that are as interesting as Jerry Hayes. Next week on the podcast, I will be interviewing Detective Bob Bayes, who is a St. Louis police officer for 40 years. He did everything from working vice where they did stings, where they wired up police officers to go in and, and be prostitutes and see if people would hire them. They, he was on drug busts. He's been shot at, he has done all sorts of work of, from the DEA to training police officers. He's got ideas about what went wrong at Ferguson and how people were feeling. All of it is interesting. And if you wanna hear that and it's a perspective I guarantee cannot be heard anywhere else. I hope you'll hit the subscribe button and if you like what I'm doing here, make sure you know that if you gimme a five star review and you write comments, that starts spreading it out to more people. That signals to your podcast provider that this is an interesting podcast and other people should listen to it. And the more people that listen, the more valuable it becomes and it'll actually be a network effect because I'm finding that my listeners are sending me ideas on great people to interview and that is what I need.

Vance Crowe [01:39:28] I don't know all the interesting people in the world. You do. So if you have interesting people that you think I should interview and they're in the St. Louis area, or they can get to the St. Louis area, let me know. We're gonna keep doing these interviews live. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for listening. The first five episodes, six now we're great. And I've been so glad to do it. And now I'm, I'm addicted, I want to keep doing this more and more. So I hope you can help me make these podcasts great. And just know I am so glad you're listening. Thanks so much and we'll be back next week.