Beekeeping Around the World: China

- Hello everyone.

Welcome to "Beekeeping Around the World." Today we're gonna be talking about China with our guest speaker Zachary Huang.

Zach grew up in a small village in Hunan and attended an agricultural college in China and was among the first batch of college students after the Cultural Revolution.

During the early 1980s, he obtained a national scholarship to study honeybees in Canada where he got his PhD with Gard Otis at the University of Guelph.

He came to Michigan State University in 1998 where he's now an associate professor of entomology.

And today he's gonna be teaching us about beekeeping in China.

So go ahead Zach.

- Thank you Robyn.

I'll start sharing the screen.

Can you see my screen?

- Yes. Just waiting for it to be on presenter mode.

- Okay. Alright.

- So for the audience, just remember that the chat is disabled, but you can put questions for Zach in the Q&A box.

- You can see my screen now?

- It still looks like the editing mode of PowerPoint.

- Okay. Hmm.

I just started, it's says request once again.

- That's not gonna happen again.

- Can you see my presentation screen?

- We see, I don't know, some queen cups or something like that.

Slide 53 and you're muted now as well.

Sorry, I won't touch it again.

Go ahead, unmute yourself.

Better.

- From the beginning.

That's it.

- Yes, you got it.

We're all good now.

- Thank you Robyn for inviting me to this seminar.

So today I'm going to give you a brief introduction of beekeeping in China.

My talk will consist of two parts.

First part is beekeeping with and biology of apis cerana the other honeybee species.

And then the second part is how do people in China produce royal jelly using apis mellifera.

So I give you a brief introduction of the total number of honey bee colonies in China.

This is based on my article for in the book "ABC & XYZ" the culture.

I did some research a few years ago and found there are 6 million honeybee colonies for apis mellifera and 4 million colonies of apis cerana.

So the total is about 10 million colonies.

That's about three times more of what we have and they produce a lot of honey.

About a quarter of the honey production was attributed to China.

And that was based on 2017 data.

So here's a map of the distribution apis cerana colonies.

Each start represents 10,000 columns as you can see the distributions mostly concentrated in the Central China and South China.

Very few bee colonies here in Xinjiang and Tibet and in Mongolia.

This is an aperee I visited in 2001, I think it is near Beijing.

So you can see apis cerana is this right next to the house.

Here's the main door people enter.

So the bees are not that defensive.

You can walk around here without senior incidents these.

And sometimes the colonies are quite weak.

So this is the colony will open, it's actually a standard box divided into two parts.

It's two different colonies and one has two friends.

Another one has three friends of bees.

This is another beekeeper who visited in Uja China which is just north of Yunnan province, Hubei province.

And they have all apis cerana boxes in bamboo forest.

And this is very common for beekeepers in China, to stay inside a tent.

Was gas stove to cook and sleep inside here and basically managing the bees every day.

And there apis cerana colony is much stronger, you can see has five friends of bees and it's quite crowded.

And another this Yunnan province, South China.

I saw all the boxes here with apis cerana just on the balcony here.

Sorry it's not really a balcony but it's under the roof here, part of the structure, on the second storey.

I sent my son to China for volunteer work for three months and he was involved in teaching beekeepers trying to transfer the bees from lock hives into boxes.

So part of that process to fix a cone into moveable friends like this.

And he was trying to show them how bees are not so defensive you can hand move the bees into the box.

And so this is one frame actually fixed the wooden frame that's recently migrated and that was me here trying to find mites.

There are mites in apis cerana, that's around 2002.

This is in Yunnan province.

Again, a stronger apis cerana colony.

But still many people prefer in the old traditional style have, which does not have durable frames.

Those are photos a friend of mine Turkey in 2002, 2011, 2012 near Beijing.

And you have those wooden boxes and was clay and a small hole as entrance.

And he even put some sort red paper written saying "Bees, prosper here." In the slogan for the bees to read.

(Zach chuckles)

Another one here says, "Happiness for the beehives." So those are the beehives, you still see them in China.

But the extension agents are trying to convince beekeepers to transfer them to removable frames, it's easier to manage.

So the major difference is between the two species are in a foreign slides or tell you a little bit.

So the apis cerana endemic in China and it's of course resistant to varroa because that's original host and they have co-evolved with the mites.

So they have different ways to deal with mites and apis cerana in China was introduced and it's damaged by varroa mites.

But also not only by varroa mites but also by tropilelaeps which the US has been keeping an eye out for this new past.

Because if you think varroa it's bad tropilelaeps is gonna be much worse than varroa, especially in warmer areas like Florida, Georgia, it's gonna be a nightmare.

That's a picture I took comparing varroa raw mites here, it's wider and this is tropilelaeps, it's about one third of the width of the varroa mite.

This is in the Florida pamphlet talking about tropilelaeps mites.

So in a lot of ways apis cerana is very similar to African bees here in our country.

The bee individuals are smaller and the colony size is also smaller.

They prefer a smaller cavity one as well.

And of course because of this it has a lower honey yield about 10 kilograms per year if you're lucky compared to 40 or 50 kilograms for the western honeybees.

Has more frequent absconding probably four or five times a year in warmer areas.

And also frequent absconding which is very rare in our bees.

So in the cerana bees we trucked some bees to a new place.

Next day we lost about half our bees because of absconding.

They didn't like the transportation just take off.

Our bees do not do that.

So the few slides comparing the biology, there's apis cerana bees have more cleaning dance which causes more grooming.

So this phase during the dancing natural shaking bees are paying attention.

Now usually they'll jump to the bee.

All bees also do that but they don't dance as often.

And apis cerana does not have propolis.

So this is probably a benefit if you're working with bees, I just hate working with bees and getting your hands dirty and all your pants yellowish stain that you can never get rid of because of the propolis and there's no easy way to get rid of that, other than wearing gloves or something.

But then it makes your hand sweaty and the honey capping of apis cerana is usually dry capping.

All bees have a mixture of red capping which you see like this part here, the honey capping is touching the honey, so it's called red capping.

We do not quite understand why are bees makes two types of capping, dry capping and white capping.

But in apis cerana, they usually only have dry honey capping.

And then the, another, (Zach coughs)

excuse me. I notice that the brood capping wax is a very different color.

So our bees would reuse a bees wax and then take whatever is available.

So the capping can be white if it's a brand new package we have started from foundation, you have of course white wax but if it's old hive with old cones, you see those color very common.

But in apis cerana we do not use old waxes.

So the capping is much wider, much cleaner.

Another interesting tid bit is the bees fan their highs in two different directions.

Our bees head through the entrance and fanning out the air drawn out and apis cerana would actually blow wind through the hive.

They would think this is actually more efficient by moving air inside.

But actually people are now saying this is probably better hardly because the honey produced by the two species of bees have different moisture.

And apis mellifera honey are usually dryer 17, 18% of water and apis cerana has maybe a 19, 20% of water, let's say it's probably because of the direction, the rare movement that apis mellifera might be more, it'd be better suited for the moisture.

Another thing we do not quite understand is this weird drone capping in apis cerana.

This conical shape and was a very thick cocoon inside.

A hole, we do not know the function, maybe in that area, but the consequence of this very thick silk is the workers cannot uncap the capping from outside.

So if for some reason a drone inside dies for example too many mites, then that drawing becomes in tune because out outside workers cannot open that.

So you see the apis cerana colony is uncapped drone boot like this, that means the bird has died, maybe it was mites, so that could be another resistance mechanism against varroa mites.

Here you see actually a drone chewing his way out.

So drone inside can chew through this thick capping but work commendables are weaker than drones or queens, so they cannot open it from outside.

In Asia and Europe actually they have this giant restaurant which one has actually waited the US in think in Seattle.

And so the Chinese bees, Asian bees cerana has better defense against those Vespa wasps.

For example through heat-balling they form a big cluster and the wasp and heat them and killing the wasp all the bees could stop foraging.

So this is actually bees of apis mellifera, yeah.

And this field, however in air and catching returning bees and chew them up and take the only, take the thoracic muscle back home to feed their babies.

Another defense mechanism is using chicken poop.

So here's a photo I took in China stop the top menu, you can see better.

So you can see this dark material here.

So I asked the beekeeper, if he knows what it was because that was before Gard's paper was published and he knows he said, "Yeah it's some kind of manure, "cow manure, chicken manure "that was deposited to the hives." So this for some reason deters the wasps coming to visit most likely as a chemical camouflage maybe cause the wasps will be deposited in some marking environment.

Perhaps that Gard Otis and Heather Matilla they are trying to follow up to see what's actual mechanism of the deterrence against the wasps.

So resistance against varroa mites.

We have the scientists mostly in the US have identified many different mechanisms of raw resistance by the honeybees.

One is attractiveness of brood slave the mites.

A lot attracted to the brood, they invade less.

Of course the big difference that you see is attractiveness of drone brood versus worker brood.

And we know that mites will prefer drone brood 10 times against one compared to worker.

Duration brood stage, so if the brood is capped shorter period of time that gives varroa mites less time to have babies.

As also grooming behavior like Christian Peng and hygienic behavior Marla Spivak that has also a special form of hygienic behavior varroa sensitive hygiene that was first published by Harbo & Hoopingarner I thought the bees were not reproducing but it's actually because of the varroa sensitive hygiene.

But I think among those, the most important one is the non-reproduction of mites in the worker cells.

So for example, African bees mites still not have babies, 70% of mites do not have babies in worker's cells in African bees.

But in the Asian bees apis cerana, this is 100%.

So mites will have babies in join brood but not in worker brood at all.

So if we can for some reason find out the reason, the mechanism of this form of regulation of mite reproduction, whether it's inhibition by the apis cerana workers or lack of nutrition, then we could probably solve the mite problem here with that still outstanding question.

In one study which showed that the mites also are able to change its cuticular hydrocarbons to mimic new hosts.

The study we transferred mites from apis cerana to apis mellifera and all mites from ais mellifera to apis cerana, so we see here the mite chemical profile is similar to the apis cerana as a second host regardless of the original host.

So if there's a middle C here, that means the original host is cerana if it's a middle that is M, that means the previous host is mellifera.

So mellifera then cerana cerana has a control they are all together.

Same here.

Mites was original, mellifera transferred to mellifera or originally from cerana transferred to mellifera, they're together.

So it's the second host that matters.

In other words, the mite was original here, then they become more like this when they transfer to mellifera.

So they mites are able to adapt, that's probably why they switched host, part of the reason.

So it's switching gears, 20 minutes, that's about half to tell you a little bit about royal jelly production using apis mellifera in China.

This is probably the only country that's producing 90% of royal jelly in the world.

So what is royal jelly?

Royal jelly is a mixture of two gland secretions.

One from the hypopharyngeal gland that produce protein and one from mandibular gland that produces lipids.

So the hypopharyngeal gland looks like this.

This is only a part of the gland which I dissected.

It's just the central duct with a lot of grapes.

And there's also mandibular gland, just a white sack attached to the mandible.

So this one has lipids, this one has protein.

So the white jelly is what's provided to the queen nova, this is the queen style open.

So it looks like jelly, looks like a yogurt consistency, creamy, white or slightly yellowish and viscous.

And if you take a taste for the first time, it tastes horrible.

The main reason is the aftertaste that's sour.

You go taste the sours for half an hour later after you stop tasting.

And it's a bitter, it's sort of a stringent because of high acidity high pH value there, a little bit of sweetness it has some sugars.

So for the bees it has as I mentioned, has protein.

That's the main source of protein source for lava.

And the protein comes from pollen that just the pollen by the nurses and then past as royal jelly to others.

So this has a consequence for the bees as a colony because even if the pollen has a lot of pesticides and herbicides, fungicides, this is actually filtered by the nurses.

So the lava does not get exposed to those chemicals cause the nurseries are kind of passed through a filter.

A lot of the chemicals are screened by the nurses not going to the royal jelly.

Some of them pass through, also fed to the queen nova to all instars but worker larvae receives worker jelly which is similar to royal jelly for the first three days.

And then after the first three days, worker jelly is modified and has tiny added and little bit of pollen.

Pollen might be just a contamination though.

And then now that queens have been fed royal jelly every few minutes basically that's why the queen can produce 2000 eggs a day because the royal jelly is so nutritious.

And the adult workers and drones actually also being fed jelly.

So they forages for example, they do not eat protein directly but they still need protein of course.

So this is provided by the nurses as a form of jelly.

So the composition of royal jelly has two-thirds of water, but the protein content is quite high if you remove the water part, sugar is 11%, fatty acids, that's also 10-hydroxy-2-decanoic acid.

That's the main, might be the two ingredient for a lot of human health.

Plus protein of course, we do not know which one.

There's some vitamins and a little of ash as you can see it's very sour, pH of 3.8.

That's like vinegar.

So there are many different claims of the health benefits to humans, royal jelly increases appetite, helps sleeping.

Some claims aphrodisiac or anti-aging, improves immunity.

But the last three actually did a Google search, relieves the menopause symptoms.

Anti-cancer, antiviral, I know those three are true.

There's a lot of studies to just give you an idea not of how many papers by only schooling the last two or three years.

And you can see another reputable journals published in effect of royal jelly on antitumor activity, antiviral activity of royal jelly.

So it's real, it's something good for us.

So how do you produce it?

So basically it's very similar to queen rearing technique.

You trick the workers into thinking they need to produce more queens and you give them a lot of queen cells, give them a small lava and the workers go crazy deposit royal jelly into those cells and you have a way of picking through a way of the queen lava and then scoop out the royal jelly up.

But in China there's a high royal jelly bees that's been selected.

So the benefit is that there's no need to be queen for the colony.

So for our bees here to produce royal jelly, we would have to make a queen's hive.

So that's a lot of hassle.

And also it's not, it cannot maintain for longer term because it has has no queen.

But in China they can keep producing royal jelly in the same colonies.

Because of the special feature of those high royal jelly bees.

Because you can have a queen below those queen scooter and have cells above and you have 98% queen acceptance.

With our bees, you have a queen below, you give themselves, you can get 5%.

And of course the royal jelly yield is much higher with those bees, maybe double.

So there's one study shown the physiological differences between high royal jelly bees and the regular bees, regular type bees that lot of things have changed in the protein regulation.

So royal jelly protein here for example, the royal jelly bees is two times higher, the royal jelly protein.

And protein folding is increased protein biosynthesis here is 10 times higher.

Development related protein expression, carbohydrate and energy metabolism here it's also changed.

So grafting larvae on day one, you basically like queen variant but you have more dense cells here cause you don't not need to have queen cells that they're separatable put into nooks.

So I'm gonna show you a video, see how fast, people...

This is actually a video made in Taiwan.

I've seen faster video like this in China.

People are just like robots.

Oops, I have to switch.

And then this is accepted cells, two days after grafting.

So that will be 40 hours after grafting a total of 72 hours.

If you graft first day old larvae and you can see the acceptance is very high.

And then you would have to individually cut using a nice knife, cut the waxes off, so it's easier to scoop up the royal jelly.

So this is after you trim the waxes off and you see all those queen cups, each one with a larvae still inside and you have to use the forceps, pair of forceps to individually take the larvae into another wire.

Then you scoop the royal jelly like this, you'll use a spatula to scoop the royal jelly out.

I also have a video.

This guy's faster.

So this one, this video are made in Taiwan again.

So there's a whole industry ready for royal jelly production in China.

They have devices to collect eggs into queen cells directly so that you do not have to graft.

They have automatic grafting machine, to replace human labor and they have royal jelly harvesting machine to scoop a whole roll of sales one time I've seen those machines to work.

So last year when I was in China I was invited to visit this guy who invented this machine.

So this is basically a machine that has computer vision.

that can see which cell has a one edge larvae and then moving the gadget to the cell and then using the same Chinese grafting tool to graft the larvae and deposit into the plastic cups.

As you can see is actually slower than a human.

But of course, the benefit is you don't have to train the human hands and this would work tirelessly for you twenty hours a day, if you want, just by giving them the strips and having the frame of larvae provide to the machine.

Machine's not gonna get tired but it's kind of expensive.

The machine, I think it's probably 20, 30,000 Yuan Chinese, it's probably about at least eight to 10,000 US dollars each.

So the approximate price in China for royal jelly is about $90 per kilo compared to five to $10 per kilo for honey.

So it's about 10 times price difference compared to honey.

In US, almost all the royal jelly in the US market were imported from China.

The sales around $99 per pound now used to be, two or three years ago, used to be $50 per pound.

Of course smaller packages would cost more.

In France actually you imported the high royal jelly production bees in France and they sell side by side two types of royal jelly, this is maybe 15 years ago when I visited France.

They sell the Chinese imported royal jelly the same price as us here, 97 euros per kilo which is one same $90 per pound at that time.

But for the locally produced royal jelly that was housed in France using the Chinese beans.

So the quality they say it's the same.

I asked what the prize and its 971 euros per kilo.

Wow that's 10 times price difference between the imported Chinese royal jelly versus locally produced.

I told the French guys I said, "This would not work in US." However my customers, if I tell them the same quality once produced in Michigan and let you sell you $900 per kilo.

But the challenge imported largely, I can sell you $99 per kilo.

Nobody would buy the Michigan produced one.

They'll just go for the one with the lowest cost.

So this is the cultural difference in Europe, they want to support the local industry if I pay more.

So royal jelly can be processed into a freeze dried powder, like this.

This is actually a package in Japan was Japanese or in China they are sold as pills.

Actually I Googled, here we have it two from Puritan, $28 for bottle and 20 gel caps was 500 milligrams royal jelly or frozen royal jelly, that's their liquid.

My wife eats and she mixes one part of royal jelly to one part of honey so it doesn't taste as bad.

But most people do one part of royal jelly to two parts of sugar, two parts of honey.

So then it's more palatable.

And you only need to take one to two teaspoon a day.

So the last, I still have 10 minutes.

So how do Chinese beekeepers live with Varroa destructor?

They have had it for 50 years, more than 70 years.

They were first discovered in China in the 1950s.

But the major difference between our beekeepers and Chinese beekeepers, nearly all beekeepers in China cage their queens to create broodless period, it takes the queens about 20 days and then treat for mites.

So all the mites are sporadic and because you don't have any cap brood, this of course results in much higher efficiency.

But caging the queen is very time consuming and also labor intensive.

And also it gives the colony a wrong message that maybe the queen is inferior because not enough queen pheromone is transmitted through the cage to the workers.

So when they have an opportunity for example, if you catch the queen right away, next day the colony is strong, they could raise a few queen cells to replace the queen, thinking the queen is bad.

But if you cage the queen for a long time and the colony, queen quality might also suffer with not have any data though, but it's possible to have side effects.

But I think this is a greatest Chinese invention is the queen first control when.

We do not have that many US yet.

So it's basically a very simple plastic green with the opening.

You have to buy special pair of forceps to open them to open them up and put it into the queen.

So the queen head would be here and thorax would be inside this.

So that way the queen won't...

The queen abdomen is half covered by this plastic so she can't even bend her abdomen and she can back into her cell.

So the benefit is that this queen is free roaming in the colony.

So the queen pheromone is normal, colony will perceive as totally queen white colony because she cannot lay eggs.

If you are brave enough, I saw how the challenge of opening this, that seems to be very tricky.

I took pictures of queens was this rain but I couldn't find them.

I have so many photos I still have to find my own pictures.

So I got those from the internet, from windows.

So the side effect of this is besides the queen cannot lay eggs, they also cannot sting each other.

They cannot kill each other.

So this creates queens that could coexist.

So this video shows they're only three queens, one, two think there was another one it's a different color.

But you can see the position of this ring, in this one.

So in this one the Chinese guy was saying, the multiple queens together and the colony was successful over winter.

This one I counted 12.

12 queens on this side, on this side maybe 10 or 11 cause it was too fast.

Just think about it, this is a new method of queen banking.

Now you could have this currently was 20 queens free roaming and coexisting because they will not carry each other because they can sting each other.

The other two methods that have been studied is cutting the sting of the queen or remove during surgery, remove the mandibular glands of the queens.

So you could have five or eight queens together in the same colony that has been published by Chinese scholars in English literature.

But this method has not been published other than beekeepers are using it.

So that's one you mentioned that we might be able to adapt for clean banking.

I found that interesting and maybe we should try to study them.

So thank you very much.

My email address is very easy to remember.

bees@msu.edu.

My website is also similar, so it's bees.msu.edu.

And I have a website that has a lot of honey bee photos like this one, ww3, because I have been hosting the website using different software and twice (coughs) so to maintain the links I blocked before I kept the...

Migrate to ww2 then ww2 was changed, so I kept those photos there.

And then the new ones are in ww3.

So that's the reason why, the strange name of the web you have.

Thank you.

We have enough time for questions I think.

- All right. Hey that was great.

Some really interesting concepts there.

Some things have been new to me on those ending slides there.

So there were a number of questions that came in and let's just start off on the royal jelly one as that was kind of towards the end of the presentation and a little more recent.

And some of these, you've asked, some of these you have addressed.

So does the age of the selected larvae matter?

I think in the presentation, I think it was three days that you were removing the larvae and then removing the royal jelly, is that correct?

- Yes. If you are counting grafting as day one, then on day three you remove the larvae.

And because I have studied the highest amount royal jelly would be inside the...

Would be when the lava is 72 hours old.

So if you grabbed the 24 hour old lava, yes, the larvae age is also important.

So you don't want to graft too large a larvae because larvae will be consuming our royal jelly you'll end up with less. Yeah.

So for example, if you give a queen cup 48 hour larvae and you wait for two days, your royal jelly yield will be half, cause the larvae is going to eat so much faster when the score-- - Yep, that makes sense.

So with the removal of that larvae, I mean they're high in protein, rich in protein.

Is there any use with with that?

Any sort of medicinal purposes or something along that line?

- Yeah. There's most people throw that into a liquor.

Some people sell queen larvae as a food or something.

But that's actually a secret, an American secret is that's not listed in the ingredient.

When I was in California they told me, all the facial creams ladies use, a lot of them have queen larvae inside, but they don't list it because they're gonna scare people away.

But there's actually larva in there.

(both laugh)

- Rubbing insect parts on their face, right, got it.

- But I heard from California cosmetic industry people, they buy those queen larvae from China and using them in facial creams.

- All right. Yeah, that's interesting.

With the health benefits from this royal jelly, how much do you have to consume, and I think you kind of alluded to that in the sense of one part royal jelly, a teaspoon to two teaspoons of sugar or honey.

Is that enough to give you those benefits or is this something you take throughout the day or in the evening and morning or?

- Yeah, I know a Chinese professor, Chinese bee professor who died 98 last year, he eats a lot of royal jelly every day.

So most people eat two teaspoons one in the morning one in the afternoon, one teaspoon each time.

But that guy is probably eating five teaspoons each five teaspoons in the morning, five teaspoons in the evening.

- Wow, okay.

- He claims, it gives him a lot of strength and he also lived to his nineties.

Of course it's sample of one, so.

- Yeah, right.

- But I know a lot of Chinese bee people who eat royal jelly regularly.

I haven't started yet, my wife eats royal jelly, I haven't started yet, I might need to soon.

(Zach laughs)

- Sounds like it can get quite expensive if I take more than a teaspoon there.

All right, so there were some questions, you know, here in the US most of us are dealing with Apis mellifera, and there were a lot of questions on the Apis cerana.

And so there were a couple questions where they wanted a more explanation or review of it, of the hole in that drone brood.

- We do not know the function.

- [Moderator] Okay.

- It could be, I doubt it's for air.

It could be that the capping so thick, maybe not enough oxygen gets through.

- Okay.

- Because most of the cuppings are air permeable, like the way our drone and the queen cells, you know, it's cap, the oxygen still gets in, but in those ones are very thick, maybe three times thicker than our drones.

So the workers outside cannot even chew it open.

- Yeah right, you did mention that, that's right.

- Yeah. So maybe it's for oxygen we do not know.

- Okay.

So what is the development time for drone brood?

For mellifera it's about what, 24 days, Is that very similar to?

- Very similar.

Yeah, I think it's 23 or 24.

- Okay. - One day difference for the queen, one day difference for the drone.

- So you mentioned with cerana the propolis, it's just not there or in very, very low amounts and-- - Not there, zero.

- So you know over here with the mellifera, you know one of the, we talk about it, is the microbial benefits, some of them dealing with some disease issues.

Is that a problem over there or they've just evolved over time where that's just not an issue?

Or they have different ways or methods of dealing with some of these microorganisms.

- That's still a mystery.

Yeah, we do not understand why, they don't...

They actually do not have American foulbrood or European foulbrood disease.

They do have a virus, the sac root can be bad, can wipe out 90% of these, you know, one yard, but every few years, but not all the time.

It's like an epidemic wave goes through.

But other than that they don't have many larvae problems despite the fact that they do not have properties to fight against a microbes.

So we do not understand why, what are the other mechanisms they have against microbial diseases.

Yeah, that could be open area for study.

- So how about with honey?

Does it ferment with that much water or is there some properties in there, not too much of a problem?

- Not too much of a problem.

Never ferments when they're inside the hive.

So once you house it, of course if you're not careful they could ferment.

- Okay. How about breeding with cerana and mellifera?

Is there cross breeding there or is there enough of a difference, it does not occur.

- It does not occur, people have tried.

Yeah, it's two totally different species and they actually, Conniger has published a few papers studying the mechanism of the incompatibility by putting sperm of one species in another and watching the embryo developments, see what stage they die.

And they always die during egg stage before the larvae hatches.

- Okay.

One of the opening slides you had showed the amount of colonies with mellifera and the amount of colonies with cerana, is that gonna remain pretty stable or do you see it shifting one way or the other?

Or is it just that one produces more honey, one's better royal jelly and there's always going to be kind of that balance that you showed on that slide?

Or are we looking something different as years go by?

- I think that it's pretty much balanced 60% for, mellifera because it's higher yield for honey production and also royal jelly production.

But on the other hand, you don't have to worry about mites or brood disease for Apis cerana.

And again, also, another feature of cerana is a very good was sporadic nectar resources.

So you don't have to feed them during, there's no death period.

So with mellifera, stronger colonies in the mountains area, some areas they can't even survive.

You have to feed them, mellifera but cerana you don't have to feed them, they take care of the home, we just leave them alone and then they will be surviving and they just house a little bit of honey.

So that's why in Vienna I think Gard Otis has been going there to let farmers to raise four or five colonies of cerana.

Very little investment.

So then as income, additional, no income for their family.

So compared to mellifera, it's usually either or, you know, usually you have to go large to make enough money.

Or with just five or six colonies that you have so many problems to deal with, with mites and stuff.

A lot of people do not want to get into it.

So cerana has never been more friendly that way.

- Okay. All right.

So going on a couple different topics, questions that were answered.

Here in the US you know, honeybees got their issues problems, but the number of colonies pretty much remains constant year after year, we replenish and so forth.

And so we always have this number of European honeybee colonies.

But there is an issue with the native bees they seem to be declining some issues with that.

Margarita does a lot of studies with that.

Is that very similar over in China?

You know, what is the state of the native bee population, is there some tug and pull with competition with the honeybee population?

- That's basically mostly I've studied only a few people think the Doctor Drew in Beijing, he has started, we were looking at this area to see native bees in China.

And of course I do not have a good baseline like 20 years ago, what is the population of native bees?

They do not have that.

So they're just starting to pay attention to that because of the western European and US studies have shown that.

So they're looking at those and I think there's a hint of native bees declining also because of habitat destruction and also pesticide use.

A very typical thing of course, you see China using humans to pollinate pests.

That means there's no native bees.

If you don't have honey bees and you don't have any pollinators, it's so bad because of the pesticide use or habitat destruction.

Or both. Yeah.

- So you said that humans are starting the pollinate?

Do some of the hand pollination?

- Yeah, China, some places are using human, the human being to pollinate pairs.

- Well, that's interesting, cause one of the questions was with the lockdown in China.

With this whole, you know, pandemic and extended lockdown did you have beekeepers not able to move hives around for pollination purposes?

And then did humans have to step in, to do some of that with the carpets and fruit trees?

- Yes, the lockdown also locked the down beekeepers for sure, but the human pollination started before that, before the pandemic.

So there has been a tradition in a few areas of China, mostly pears.

Bees do not very particularly like pears based on two or three different papers recently.

It's because the order of the pear flowers, stinky flavor that honey bees do not like.

Some native bees might visit pears, but when you have pear flowers and peach flowers that are both in China.

Bees will go to the peaches and avoid the pears.

- Yeah. That's a bummer.

If we have to go to hand pollination for a lot of our crops, that's just gonna add to the cost and you know, we have these ecosystem services, we should be taking advantage of those or preserving those.

- Yeah.

- Question on, you know, we see a lot of this in some of our journals or our trade journals about the issue with fake honey.

You know, it's not cured properly or it's being adulterated.

So you know, what are local beekeepers in China trying to do to address that issue, or you know, what's the story?

- Yeah, in China is a bigger problem.

So now the consumers are trusting beekeepers because I know very few of them would make fake honey.

So it's only the factories that are in China using con syrup, rice syrup and package them into honey and sell them in the supermarkets.

So the supermarket honey is probably 80% freight in China.

But if you buy directly from beekeepers, so I would say 90% of them are probably real.

So a lot of consumers are buying directly from beekeepers, which is good for the beekeepers because they have no middle man and also fetcher, they almost get a better price of my honey here in Michigan than they're-- - It's no different here in the US, you're right Zach.

'Cause that's what we try to tell folks, go directly to the beekeeper and you know, skip that middle man, you know what you're getting and you know, helping the beekeeper out, probably get a better cost and so forth, so.

So you ended up your presentation with these rings.

And there were a couple questions on that.

I mean there was a couple folks that were wondering is that something that they can purchase?

Is it available in the United States or is that something still in its infancy, not yet?

- Oh it's probably available in the Chinese store I think called Ali.

A-L-I that's, I saw it in Turbo just now when I Google.

So I don't know what's English name.

I say it's probably called Queen Rain or something.

I can do some more research and see if it's in English market, but it's-- - No it sounds like maybe a workshop that Robyn can put on for upcoming field-- - I have brought a few back from China.

Maybe Robyn can have a US test in the field and start a US market.

(Zach laughs)

- She's always looking for more work, right?

- [Zach] Yes. It's interesting.

- So with those multiple queens in there though, everyone is calm in that hive, because you have all these different pheromones.

I know the stinger's removed or it's not removed but it's-- - Not removed, it's just.

- Right, it's not removed but they can't utilize those.

But with those pheromones, things aren't disarray?

- No, well of course the colony doesn't have brood because the queens cannot.

So if you have one free queen, one queen without the win, that queen's probably gonna kill those other queens.

So you have to make sure everybody has a win so they don't kill each other.

But the colony will function normally and so be a great way of banking queens, maybe the quality will be better than the caged queens.

'Cause they're getting all the same food normally.

Imagine the queen combining the cage.

It's like a queen in the prison.

So the prison food is probably not gonna be as good as a normal, cause you have to feed through the grid and the queen has the beg through the grid.

Okay, I need some royal jelly.

And now queen stop.

So the caged queen does not have the speak well abdomen and the caged queen will be able to fly.

That means she is thinner.

But those queens are probably just as fat can fly neither of course she can't fly with the rain.

But even if you take the rain off, I bet you maybe the-- - Well that's interesting.

I don't know Robyn, maybe we can get ahold of that paper that was published for folks cause there are several questions on that.

Maybe provide the link to that paper.

So one that we got room for one more question, Zach, and so we'll end it on a sweet note.

So when we talk to some of these various beekeepers from around the world, one of the things that always comes up is varietal honey.

And in China is there a certain varietal honey that is really kind of special or unique to China?

- Yeah, that's many different unique honey in China.

There was one in Yunnan province, that's the honey from a minty plant, it's black and it's supposed to be very good.

Of course you smell the aroma.

Its like when I go to France, I buy the honey that's from the, what's the flower, that smells just like the flower?

So the price is twice higher, so of course you buy.

So this honey in China, it's from that flower and it smells just like the flower.

So in France you have thyme honey, and also you have the honey from what's say, what's that common flower that's a purplish color similar to thyme, but it's a mint.

- Lavender?

- Lavender, yeah.

So lavender honey in France, I bought some because can't buy it from the US.

I heard some Michigan beekeepers also have lavender honey.

But in China, there's couple that we do not have because of the plants, they have many different plants we do not have, so yeah.

- Okay. - [Moderator] All right.

Well Robyn, you wanna take it from here?

- Sure, yeah, thanks Zach.

I was searching all over online to find those birth control rings, I couldn't find them.

(Zach laughs)

So we need to talk some more about that.

- Okay. I think I-- - Thanks for a great presentation.

That is super interesting.

I'm really enjoying this around the World series where we get to learn all kinds of new things.

So I really appreciate you coming on.

So I did wanna ask you one question.

People love your website with the photos, are they free to use those photos?

- Yes. If they are using it for presentation and if there's no money, they exchange hands.

So, if they're using some brochure, they're charging students money, that's different.

But if it's totally free, I say you are free, I'm free.

So that's my slogan.

So if they're given beekeeper presentation and not charging money, then my photos are free to be used.

For personal use. - Well thank you very much.

Thank you for sharing those.

I do find that to be a very excellent resource.

Okay, thank you everybody.

Just a reminder, we have two more webinars coming up, both of them at noon on the next two Thursdays.

Next week we'll be visiting Argentina and then the following week we'll be visiting Switzerland.

So please join us to learn more.

Thank you everybody.

- Thank you.