Beekeeping Around the World: Ukraine

- Hello, everyone, welcome to Beekeeping Around the World 2024 series.

Today, we're beginning with beekeeping in the Ukraine.

I hope everyone's audio is working now.

Please note that this is being recorded and will be available online in about a week, so if you tell your friends about it, you can let them know they can watch it for free in a recorded way.

So today, we have our speaker, Petrusia Kotlar, to talk about the Ukraine.

Petrusia is an alternative healthcare physician, part-time farmer, beekeeper, practitioner, and researcher, and she's the vice president of the American Apitherapy Society.

Apitherapy is defined as the medical use of all products made by honeybees, including honey, propolis, pollen, royal jelly, and bee venom.

Since 2012, Dr. Kotlar has been collaborating with Ukrainian researchers, scientists, and beekeepers from the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences in Kyiv, Ukraine, and other regions, connecting and networking with researchers, including some from Penn State, and her engagement with Ukrainian beekeeping has been supported by the Woskob New Century Fund, associated with the international programs of college and ag sciences at Penn State.

So we're really excited to have Petrusia here to tell us about beekeeping in the Ukraine.

So take it away, Petrusia.

- Okay, thank you so much, Robyn.

I am so honored to be here.

This is a project that we've been working on for a while since last year we missed the cut, but we're ready to roll today.

So I'm going to share my screen.

Oh, I also wanted to let everybody know that we're very excited to have Dr. Leonora Adamchuk here from Ukraine.

She really is the specialist, and without her, we could not have shown you more of the contemporary effects of what's happening in Ukraine today, especially during wartime.

So I am going to introduce her fully in the middle of the presentation, so we'll be able to meet her on a better scale.

So I'm going to share my screen.

Whoops, share.

Okay, so here we go, sorry.

- I just wanted to let everyone know, if you have questions, you can put them into the chat, and we will get to them after Petrusia's presentation.

- Okay, so this a journey, essentially, that started in 2012 when beekeepers from the University of Penn, or Penn State, I'm sorry, PSU, Penn State, and also from the University of Minnesota, we got together, and we went on a journey to Ukraine to visit various areas of various apiaries and areas of beekeeping.

So we started in Kyiv.

I did the best I could on this map.

You can see that it's an old map because it's changed so much in these last 10 years.

But we started in Kyiv.

We moved on slightly to the west, northwest to the Obruch region or the Zhytomyr Oblast.

Now, oblast is like a state or province in Ukraine.

Then we moved on to Olevsky district, to the Volynska Oblast, which we'll see the pchelnij ray, which translates into the paradise of honeybees.

We moved on to a private apiary, where we'll see there, the practice of beekeeping is very unusual, and I did try to choose the most unique and unusual activities that are occurring in Ukraine.

Then we moved on to Cherkasy Oblast.

We ended up in Lutsk, all the way to the northwest, and then we returned back on August 19th to Kyiv, and that is a day that they called Medovyi Spas, or the Honey Savior, when the whole of Ukraine celebrates the bee and beekeepers.

I mean, and the honeybee and beekeepers.

So our very first stop was this, it's right in Kyiv, it's called the Petro Prokopovych Ukrainian Institute of Beekeeping in Kyiv, Ukraine.

It is a place that I'm gonna show you just a little bit of a visual here.

They have a collection of all of these beekeeper beekeeping equipment, but especially these hives that date back to the medieval times, where they started out with this wild beekeeping or wild hives from hollowed trees, and they progressed to these more contemporary types of hives.

It's definitely a stop for everybody to visit if they're in Kyiv.

So historically, most of the beekeepers were holy men, monks, philosophers, or inventors.

And, of course, this is another woodcut that's from the museum there.

Because of those ceaseless worth, work ethnic, ethic, I'm sorry, productive lifestyle and production of medicinal products, they are referred to as God's insect in Ukraine or (speaking in foreign language).

So today, we call a beekeeper in Ukraine a pasichnyk, and a pasika is what an apiary is translated, and that's a traditional beehive in Ukraine is a horizontal, or it's called a (speaking in foreign language), but it's basically made of wood and wood slats.

A little bit different from ours, and we'll go into that.

But originally, the beekeepers in Ukraine were called bortnyk, and a bort was a hollowed out tree trunk that they kept bees in, and they suspended them from trees to keep away the predators.

You can see on the right-hand side the bears.

It was a labor-intensive process to raise these borty to the top of the trees.

And this is just, again, another depiction.

These bortnyk used to suspend themselves from the trees and actually visit their borty or their beehives just suspended from the treetops.

So the original ones, of course, were borty.

Then they started, or that was actually the semi-domestication of the swarms was the bort stage, and then, of course, the domestication of the swarms became the beehives on the bottom, the skeps, the traditional ones.

Okay, an interesting fact that, again, I've learned from this, visiting this museum, was in 1814, Petro Prokopovych, he actually invented the very first removable frame hive, and it was called the beginning of rational beekeeping.

You could see, on the right side, that was his design.

And just an interesting fact that in 1852, in the US, Langstroth, this is the types of hives most beekeepers use in the US, he invented, or he actually copyrighted the removable frame hive in 1852, so just an interesting fact that they were working on it a little bit earlier.

Okay, so moving on through this museum, you could see some of their very interesting wooden, these are extractors, and also, they were very big into the machinery that created their natural beeswax foundation.

Later on, like we are, they're experimenting with foundationless frames, but here are all pure beeswax types of extra machinery.

Here's also a very interesting collection of all different types of beekeeping tools.

So you can see, on the left lower, those are all capping scrapers.

We have some queen, if you go up to number 12, 12 o'clock, you can see some queen cages.

And as we move around, you can see different screens and brushes.

I think if you are beekeepers, you can recognize many of these different types or styles of tools.

Okay, outside of the museum, they had some innovative little water sources that they have created.

And this is an example of a nucleus garden.

Everybody knows what a nuc is, I think.

It's a small miniature hive, and here, they keep those all together in a garden for growing.

Our next stop was going to one of these huge factories.

It's called Apis Ukraine, and you can see that they were mass-producing much of the honey in the outskirts of Kyiv, so we got to experience that as well.

Okay, so just again, some major interesting information about Ukraine.

They specifically have three different native bee species.

Carpathian bees, Apis mellifera carpatica, is found in the western part of the country.

Ukrainian steppe bee, that is living in the central, and the Polissia bee, which was very much of interest to me.

Apis mellifera mellifera is up in the north.

Okay, so we moved a little bit west to our first stop at an apiary, where Petro, this older gentleman, 68-year-old, kept 50 colonies of Polissia-bred honeybees.

Now, some of the specific, so we're gonna look at their different style of this.

This is called the (speaking in foreign language).

It's a little bit different from our more vertical beehives where we keep our colonies.

And just some of the different characteristics of the Polissia bee, as you're just looking, as we visited this apiary, that they have a significant winter hardiness.

They have a low tendency to swarm.

Some lines are very gentle, but they are defensive against invaders such as wasps.

They have a carefully measured brood cycle.

They have a strong drive to collect pollen.

They have high longevity of worker bees and queens, and they have excellent flight strength, especially in the cold weather.

There is possible hardiness against varroa mites as well.

So here on the right, you can see how this gentleman is, this is Petro.

He is showing you these dark, darker, or black bees of the Polissia region.

They use these slats to cover the individual areas.

We use a inner cover, so a little bit different.

So you can see the difference in these, and they're also, their frames don't really, they're not compatible with the regular Langstroth hives, so, you know, you have to kind of adapt.

Here, I know you don't hear him speaking, but he's telling us about the voices or when the queen cries or she calls out, and then that's when she perhaps flights.

So, so he was saying that she is ready to fly and mate.

And this little, I like to add a little bit of ethnography.

So I guess this little poem is just reminding us that the old one will settle in the old tree and the new queen will stay in the hive.

Okay, so we're moving on to a different area of Ukraine.

You can sees a little bit of the countryside.

So we moved on to Zhytomyr region, Rudnia village.

We actually got to take a nice wagon ride, and it really kinda brought you back to these medieval times or this archaic practice of beekeeping, which I mentioned before, which is called bortnytstvo.

This beekeeper that we will watch here for a little bit kept 30 hives, 32 colonies, and 50 borts.

So I had this playing to music, but I'm just going to describe what he's doing.

Now, again, a first part of this is that he has to bring that hive up the tree, and they used to use this wagon wheel, and they'd step on it and then it would spin and raise a 200-pound bort up into the tree.

This gentleman, we'll watch a little bit about how he's going to suspend himself.

I know that most of the viewers here are probably beekeepers, so they know that that was a smoker he was using, and inside, you'll see, again, foundationless 'cause this is just wild beekeeping.

This is just placing or catching a swarm and placing it into this bort or this tree hive.

So, again, he's sitting in his little swing, and he's gonna show us what's going on inside there.

So you could see, there's a little bit of brood on the right side, some natural comb.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting, too.

I was right up there filming right next to him, so it was kind of exciting.

And, okay, so those are the bortnyks.

And here, we were sampling some of the bee bread and some of the product of that bort hive.

Okay, so these borty in the older days were marked by these banners.

So every single separate apiary was marked by using these special primitive markings.

So our next stop, we went to the sanctuary for honeybees, pchelyniy ray, which translates to the honeybee paradise.

So this was a little bit interesting because they were actually planting these fields of milkweed, and also, other interesting plant, there was lofant, which was another name for Tibetan, anise, and these were specifically grown for medicinal honeys.

This what very much interested me.

And then this second beekeeper is talking about integrative pest management, and he was saying that you would put artemisia, mints, and different kinds of herbs underneath there, and this is their way of battling or to deter varroa mites.

Now, again, this was something that was unique.

So we were asking, why four frames?

So, oh, this was a time also when Penn State University researcher and University of Minnesota researchers, we were collecting samples to test the propolis, honey, and the pollen.

So here's them, very labor-intensive method of collecting the propolis.

And so, here, I had to, of course, ask Leonora (chuckling)

what was the purpose of these four frames, but, of course, it makes very much sense.

So when you are creating nucleus or nuclei, that's the reduced frame, which is usually five frames, this is so that we can create more queens.

So they split this up.

They multiply it so that we can get four at a time instead of just one nucleus at a time, and then they place these into these flyover places where the queens meet with the drones, and we call those our drone congregation areas or DCAs, and so this is similar to that.

So this on the right is a (speaking in foreign language) park, or a nucleus park, where you could see that they're all in groups of four.

I thought that was a little bit unique.

Okay, here, this is another very unique discovery that when I was in it, they specifically are asking what they were doing that was unique, so this was the use of something called an isolator.

So, again, they would, they would separate the queen in the winter, and she's able to be fed and taken care of by all of the worker bees.

And they just kept her isolated so that she would not lay in the middle of the...

You could see, in this case, they had two isolators and two queens, and I asked why they were doing this, and they just said that it was just like as insurance, to make sure that these queens survived.

Okay, on the right, very interesting gentlemen.

They were very excited to explain all of these benefits of the isolator.

Oops, oops.

So, again, the purpose of the isolator was due to global warming.

There are warm times, just like we had last week right here.

Our bees were flying.

And many times, the queen does begin to lay eggs, and then many times, the cluster does not thrive.

It disintegrates, and then the colony winters poorly, so they believe that when you isolate the queen, then she will not lay eggs prematurely.

Okay, here, again, I'd like to intersperse with just a little bit of the ethnography, also just to show you the various different displays of trunk hives and how they have progressed today to just the regular Langstroth.

So, again, this was just a little song that they sing, where, you know, Saint Nicholas came to town, and he placed one group or one swarm into a thick log hive, the second one into the lypa, which is basswood or linden, which is highly, highly regarded honey in Ukraine, and the third is a yellow fir, which describes the fact that you have a lot of honeydew honey that comes from the fir trees.

Okay, so we moved on.

This is again, just doesn't look like the Polissia bee, but I believe this is just a sampling of the Ukrainian steppe bee.

Pollen that we all got to sample.

Okay, this area is specifically of interest for me.

I'm involved with the American Apitherapy Society, and you can see that their collections, they plant specific medicinal plants so that they can create these medicinal-type honeys.

So here was an example of a place that we visited that showed you all the various and unique products of the hive.

This is called Medova Hata or the Honey House, and you'll be able to see some of their honey-based drinks, honey desserts, cosmetics, and but very, very much emphasis on healthcare items.

Okay, some of the very unusual ones that I found at this location was tinctures of wax moth because the wax moth also occurs.

So the Ukrainians, they create very useful things for many products of the hive.

Tincture of dead bees, propolis sprays.

I mean, we're familiar with that, usually for throat problems, and also royal jelly creams.

And I think you saw the honey wine bar.

And here they are.

Okay, so I'm listening to the music there.

Maybe next time we could share that.

Okay, so honey was also used for many wedding rituals, bathing newborns, and with infants to ensure a sweet life.

Many of the nutritional and medicinal properties are well-known, especially the byproducts such as propolis, apitoxin, or which another name for honeybee venom.

Beeswax, and this is probably one of the reasons that I started my own apiary, is because we make the Ukrainian Easter eggs, and traditionally, you could only use pure beeswax because it's the only thing when it's burned, it turns black, so we're able to use it for the pysanky.

If you look on the right-hand side at all the various products, I mean, there were so many variations of propolis, tinctures.

They make bee venom creams.

I have some examples of royal jelly products.

And so they really do have quite a lot of different products of the hive.

Here, I just wanted to, again, a different apiary that we passed.

You could see on the left at nine o'clock are the (speaking in foreign language), or the horizontal hives that are traditional in Ukraine.

And then central, you could see, are our more familiar Langstroth hive.

Okay, so we're back in Kyiv, and this is the August 19th, as I mentioned before, is a day that everybody celebrates the beekeeper and the honeybee.

All the street, there's festivals in every single oblast, every single region, every village, and you could see the variation of products.

Here, they have the wildflower honey on the left, the yellow one is acacia, very popular.

On the right is buckwheat, and then the green one, I'm not really sure.

I might have to ask Leonora what the green honey was.

The bottom one, you can see all the various products with their beeswax.

And then they have, on the bottom photo, you can see the pollen.

They sell the pollen.

They also cream honey, and they sell various forms of (speaking in foreign language), which is bee bread, which I'm going to mention a little bit later.

So that's a wonderful day to visit Ukraine, August 19th.

Okay, so now, at this point, I'd like to introduce Leonora, Dr. Leonora Adamchuk.

She is the associate professor of the department of standardization and certification of honeybee products.

She's also affiliated with the department, okay, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences in Kyiv.

She's a researcher of lab methods of assessing quality and safety of beekeeping products.

She's also associated with the Prokopovych Institute of Beekeeping.

She's a chair of the board of the Foundation of Women Beekeepers in Ukraine and expert of BeeAgro Managed Pollination Association and development of the market for bee pollination of orchards and berries.

So I was fortunate to become more than acquainted with Dr. Leonora Adamchuk because I needed to get some contemporary information about what's happening in Ukraine, especially during the war.

So I was very interested in this Foundation of Women Beekeepers that she was able to share with me, and it basically is the very first nonprofit women's NGO, non-government organization, that's registered in Ukraine.

It promotes, of course, awareness or the importance of bees for food security.

They do research.

They do workshops.

I'll go a little bit more into what specifically they do, but they are in the forefront protecting the apiaries, especially during this difficult time.

These are some of the activities that Leonora shared.

They have webinars where they develop technical regulations for cream products, dietary supplements based on beekeeping products.

They have organized a meetup, beekeeping and the war, challenges, and way to overcome them.

They have scientific and practical conference they've organized with the international participation.

They have participated in the international congress in Apimondia last year, or it was in 2022.

They also have a Buckwheat Fest, where they promote their products, and they do produce various different workshops on beekeeping.

So then, so this begins, well, what some of the really interesting things that Leonora, Dr. Adamchuk, shared with me.

So they were doing some experimentation on pollination of 700 hectares of buckwheat and training these bees using drones.

And it's interesting, drones, because that doesn't mean the male honeybee.

That means the flying one.

Well, they both fly.

So, Dr. Leonora explained it this way, that you basically feed the bees a syrup that is infused with the buckwheat flowers, and then you also get them used to the scent of the buckwheat-infused syrup, and then the scout bees then find it in front of the hive, and then they tell the forager bees, and then the forager bees follow the drone because the drone is what sprays this syrup over the buckwheat field, so they're kind of scent training the bees to find the specific area to be pollinated and collect the nectar from these areas.

So that was a very interesting experiment that they are working with today or recent years.

Okay, another area that the Foundation of Women Beekeepers are putting, they put a lotta emphasis on plants that are valuable and that produce medicinal types of honeys, and so they look a little bit more into planting specifically for products, which definitely interests me.

Okay, and this was a very unusual innovation that I learned about from Dr. Leonora.

So bee bread is an area that, of course, I just think that there's not a lot of information, so I did reach out to her, and she sent me this article that you can see from ResearchGate that Dr. Leonora and a Professor Brovarskyi, who I became acquainted with on my visit the first time, they developed this method of seeding the frames to produce bee bread in a form that can be used for human health.

So I have a little bit of show and tell, but so the equipment, you know, the equipment is very unique.

You can see, I have like that piece right here, and this is what the pellets look like at the end.

I don't know if you can see this.

So this is like a very easily accessible form of nutrition.

This is like one of the new nutraceuticals that are being developed in Ukraine for human health, so I thought this was very, very interesting.

So on the left-hand side, you can see the equipment for the bee bread for the technology.

So what you do is you fill these plastic frames that are specifically inserted into the hive.

I have one here.

And first, you seed it with honey or with pollen, then you top it off with honey, and then you place, you can see the third photo on the top, you can see they place it into the hive for, I believe, up to 10 days, but they check it periodically.

And then it's, of course, a fermentation process that changes that product into digestible or the bee bread that we know as the brood food.

So you can see the artificial bee bread is mature on the bottom frame.

And I just think this is definitely something I would like to share with the New Jersey beekeepers or Penn State if you're interested in this process.

Okay, so this year was wonderful.

Dr. Leonora and I were supported to actually attend the Apimondia Conference 2023 in Santiago, Chile, where I was able to help Dr. Leonora with some of the translations when she did her presentation, and we also did a presentation on spotted lanternfly.

So, but in the process, we were able to become so much more acquainted with innovators, with suppliers, with other researchers at this event.

It was truly a wonderful experience and a union of Ukrainian beekeepers.

Okay, prior to Apimondia, of course, I was connected with the Brotherhood of Ukrainian Beekeepers, and their initial mission was to unite beekeepers of Ukraine, establish respect for nature and the human being, revive the traditions of Ukrainian beekeeping, and improve the nation's health by means of beekeeping produce.

But today, I have been in touch with some of the representatives of the brotherhood.

They have changed their mission, I guess, as early as 2014 when the war officially began in Ukraine.

We think of it in, you know, the last two years.

This is the two-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, but it initially began 10 years ago in 2014.

So they have changed their mission to Help on Bee Wings program, and it's to support the Ukrainian beekeeper veterans.

So they have sent me some photographs of how they have adapted their mission, and they're basically working to train some of the veterans so that they can, according to their physical capabilities, to become beekeepers.

Here is their kind of, I guess, tagline.

Another area, because when I began looking into, you know, what's going on in Ukraine, like, over the last year to try to put this presentation together, I came across this group of children, it's called (speaking in foreign language), or the School Hive, in a small village outside of the Kyiv region, and, oh, they sent me so many nice notes and photos, and so I have to share these with you.

This is just some of the correspondence with one of the gentlemen that was in charge of this group.

So they basically teach children about beekeeping.

You can see on the right, this is a foundationless hive.

And so I did a fundraiser with the American Apitherapy Society, and we just raised some money so that they were able to plant for their apiary, and their whole objective was to create this bee house, and so it's sleeping on the bees.

That's what they were calling it.

We call it hive air.

I've gone to a couple of conferences where it's becoming more and more common even in the United States.

But what you do is you sleep on the hives.

You can see on the right, the hives are housed in this house, but you lay down on the hives, but everything is screened in.

So the bees fly at their leisure to the outside of the hive, and you go in there and you rest on this and you breathe this beautiful air.

It's a form of like bioresonance, so you get this vibration, and I believe that there is a lot of therapeutic value.

So this was their concept to help some of the soldiers coming back with PTSD, and so that was their project.

And you can see that on the left, that they were able to purchase some of this equipment so that they could house their bees.

Okay, so Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, especially Luhansk and the Donetsk regions were all affected by the initial war more so and presently.

So you could see, one of my contacts from the initial visit said, "Hey, Shzmula sent me these photographs from those regions and from Luhansk and Donetsk." Recently, Dr. Leonora sent me these photos from Kharkiv and Lozova, so these are more recent, and it's very sad to sees all of the destruction, and it's going to take so much time to repair.

So, again, just to kind of give you in a nutshell how this war has affected Ukraine.

Since February of 2022, the EU and the United States had to increase imports from Asia because of the problems with shipping or exporting from Ukraine, so the US has imported 52% less honey, and this is the early part of 2022, from Ukraine than a year before.

So, unfortunately, like when you have to import from certain areas, there have been some information that some of the honey coming from other parts of the world are adulterated.

We learned about this at Apimondia 2023 when we went this past year.

And so, it's again, so what can we do to try to help beekeeping during the war?

So, if it's available, buy imported Ukrainian honey and apitherapy products.

That would be helpful.

We need to get them back on their feet to support and rebuild their economy.

We are doing the best we can to keep communication opened for collaboration, and that's exactly what we're doing with Dr. Adamchuk, and we're gonna definitely continue to keep touch and keep our lines of communication open.

Okay, the most recent venture that we're going to attempt to do with Dr. Leonora is setting up fair trading for the small-scale treatment free apiaries.

So everybody is familiar with the fair trade concept.

It will definitely allow a growing number of beekeeping cooperatives to establish relationships, get better prices for their honey, and invest in community development.

But the challenge is that fair trade is not occurring at all in Europe at this time, in Latin America, Asia, and other areas, so that is going to be what we are beginning, we're beginning the process of getting the initial certification for Ukraine.

There's going to be many, many advantages if this comes through.

As you can see, prior to the war, beekeeping was a major economic activity, and they were the number one producing honey producer in all of Europe.

And they produce, I believe, 68 metric tons annually.

I just recently updated that number.

So, again, how can we help?

I think that if we do establish the equivalent of fair trade certification, that could be definitely a way that they can begin economically to get to stand up on their feet.

I believe in more medicinal-grade honeys, and they have such a variety of sources in Ukraine that they specifically can identify.

And now, we have a lab in Penn State that can identify the sources of our honey, so we're very excited about that.

So, again, our next step is going to be to translate and prepare into the Ukrainian language all the workshop material so that we can begin this grassroots project as soon as possible.

And, oh, and this little picture on the right side, it's just showing you a recent photo from the spring when I believe it was when the flood, the areas were flooded because of bursting the dam in Ukraine, I think.

I don't know if everybody remembers that, but this was a memorable photo that somebody sent me.

So, at this point, I just have to thank, I have like a sincere thank to the people who made this possible.

George and Nina Woskob of the Woskob Century Endowment Fund.

Yurij Bihun who really started this whole ball rolling almost a year, pretty close to a year ago.

Thank you, Yurij.

Deanna Behring, she's the coordinator of international programs at PSU.

Thank you, Dr. Leonora Adamchuk, for all of the help that you have given me to prepare this information here and for the time that we got to spend during Chile, and I'm looking forward to much more interaction with you in Kyiv with NULES University and with National University of Life and Environmental Sciences.

Thank you, Foundation of Women Beekeepers, the School Hive.

My friend, he was a Cherkasy beekeeper in Ukraine, Serhij Shzmula, the Brotherhood of Ukrainian Beekeepers, and all the Ukrainian beekeepers that we met.

If anybody has any questions, this is my personal email, my website.

You're welcome to email me with anything specific if I don't get to them today, okay.

- Thank you, Petrusia.

What a wonderful presentation.

So I'd love for Leonora to show us, you know, her video, so, oh, there you are.

And I'm gonna go through the questions.

We'll stay on for 15 more minutes.

I do see that someone's raised your hand, however, we can't allow you to speak.

You'll have to put a question or comment into the chat, please.

So it was really interesting, showing the historical artifacts and the fact that Langstroth wasn't the first one.

He's just the one that got the patent.

So what was the name of that?

Do we all need to change what we're calling our hives now?

The movable? (laughing)

- The Prokopovych hive?

No, I think it has been, there were some changes, but it's, yeah. (chuckling)

- Yeah, okay, "Do you know, when they were doing the foundation press, like what comb size they were using, like the hexagons?" - No, but I know what you're referring to because I know there's a different size for drone comb.

- [Robyn] Mm-hmm.

- I think perhaps Dr. Leonora might know.

I think that I could ask her.

- Please do, and there's something in the chat that's not in English if you wanna have a look.

- Oh. (speaking in foreign language)

That's a very common way to say glory to Ukraine and then the translation is to the heroes of Ukraine, so that's the response.

- [Robyn] I see.

- Okay, so, to your question, Leonora.

(Petrusia speaking in foreign language)

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- Well, first of all, boy, I'm gonna have to ask her to not say so much at one time, but she's giving her, (speaking in foreign language), or welcome to everybody here in the US, and she's happy to be here, and she said Apis mellifera, there's one standard size of all the comb that they make.

There's no variation in the size of the comb.

- Okay, thank you.

"Do you know if the different species of honeybees, you mentioned three different subspecies, are there any differences in their venom?" - Okay, (speaking in foreign language) Leonora.

(Petrusia speaking in foreign language)

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- [Petrusia] Oh, yeah. (speaking in foreign language)

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- So she said that yes.

She said that the bee venom varies as well as depending on their pollen collection in those species.

But especially, I mean, she's talking about the three species that are Apis mellifera or mellifera.

She said there's even more of an extreme difference when you talk about Apis dorsata and the other species that are not in Ukraine.

- Sure, "You mentioned something about using some herbs under a screened bottom board for IPM.

Can you expand on that a little bit?" - I mean, I could share when I witnessed that.

So artemisia, that's wormwood.

I don't know if anybody knows that plant.

There's various species of artemisia.

It's a very bitter plant and also the mint.

So that's what he was, that's what they line the bottom of their hives with, and then it's topped with a screened bottom board.

I can ask Leonora.

(Petrusia speaking in foreign language)

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm.

- So, yes, so she said that they are starting or doing a little bit more research regarding specific plants.

One is in the family of the, I think, chrysanthemum.

She told me them in Ukrainian.

I would have to specifically ask her about the genus and species of these plants, but they're trying to grow them around the apiary as well as using dried on the inside, but they're just beginning this area of research.

- Okay, you were showing the borts that are the hives up in the trees, and it seems like you got to see that, so they're still doing that, and since bears can climb trees, why are they putting them up so high?

Is it to protect against bears?

- Well, the bears, they can climb trees, but I don't know if you saw that they had these posts around the trees.

Perhaps, I mean, if you have the option of either having a hive on the ground or up in the tree, I think that it at least is somewhat of a deterrent to have it up in the tree, and they do have these sharpened stakes around there, so, I mean, that was, of course, in the medieval photo or painting.

I don't know if that, does that answer? - Asking someone, yeah, that's fine, yes.

Someone's very interested in talking to you about apitherapy, so I'm suggesting that they send you an email because I know you'll have lots of resources for him.

I saw another question.

So, thinking about beekeeping today with the war and something that the US is concerned about is tropilaelaps mites making their way to new countries.

And so, is there a concern with the war and, you know, that tropilaelaps could end up coming to the Ukraine and not getting noticed?

Is there something being done as a precaution?

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- Yeah, she understood.

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- Okay, so, of course, she spoke about interrupting the brood cycle, so that is an important part of controlling.

I don't know if I could even say what that little insect is, but she also said because the winters are longer, then there's less chance of them surviving during that time, and they, of course, pay attention to that two to three.

They interrupt that brood cycle, so careful monitoring of that.

- So the beekeepers are still able to manage their hives and check on them and look for those things?

- Leonora. (speaking in foreign language)

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- [Petrusia] Yes.

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- Okay, so she said that this insect that you refer to does not exist because of the climate.

She says they are aware of it, but they do not have this problem.

And she said more of the problem, of course, is varroa and the pesticides situation in Ukraine.

- Okay. - And they're all, this is definitely information that they are aware of.

- Great, you talked about the queen isolation cages and people seemed pretty interested in that.

So, "Was it just one queen inside or was it like a queen bank?" And secondly, "If you put a queen in there for overwintering, do the bees have a higher probability of dying because they can't move the cluster around to food?" - [Petrusia] Okay.

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- Yes, she knows the answer.

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- Okay, she said there is only one queen in the isolator, and I believe this is to extend the period of not producing brood, and then that's just something you have- (Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- [Petrusia] Okay. (speaking in foreign language)

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- This is so that the bees are not using their energy to feed brood or take care of brood, of course.

(Leonora speaking in foreign language)

- Okay, she did say, to answer your question, that she's always in the center of the cluster, or they make sure that- - Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. (speaking in foreign language)

- Okay, she personally does not practice using the isolator because she doesn't believe that it is natural.

- [Leonora] Mm-hmm.

- Okay, I think that's all we have time for.

We're hitting one o'clock.

Thank you so much to both of you for an excellent view of beekeeping in the Ukraine, thanks again.

I hope everyone will tune in next week when we have our next in the series, so we'll see you then.

- [Petrusia] Okay.

- [Robyn] Bye.

- Bye.