Rosario Candelero: Student Bee Vet (229)

Episode 229 – Rosario Candelero: Student Bee Vet

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Jim Tew: Hey, Honey Bee Obscura Podcast listeners. I've got a special series of guests here today, something I don't do that often. I'm with Rosario Candelero and with Jason Ferrell. They're husband and wife. They're separated now by several thousand miles. Rosario is a veterinary student in Mexico. What's the name of your school, Rosario?

Rosario Candelero: The National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Jim: It's a very respectable school and it's a challenging program. She's going to be a veterinarian. You going to be a large animal or a small animal veterinarian, or do you know, or both?

Rosario: I tend to think that I am going to be a small animal veterinarian because they were the reason I started the program, but I'm interested in checking out the other animals in order to increase my opportunities of job.

Jim: As well you should. If you go to school so long, ultimately, you'd like to have a job.

Rosario: Yes, of course.

Jim: Jason, what's your story, Jason? Jason Ferrell.

Jason Ferrell: What's my story?

Jim: That's just an opening for you to tell me where you want to go. Let me tell you, Jason is an IT specialist at the local library system here in Wayne County. His backstory, Jason, is the bee work you did in my lab all those years ago. He's an acceptably trained beekeeper himself.

Jason: That's true. I am dialing in on location today from an actual bee yard in an undisclosed location.

Jim: Don't tell them where. I don't want them to know, because I don't allow touring to that bee yard.

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Rosario: [crosstalk]

Jason: While the celebrity Jim of Honey Bee Obscura is in a nice climate controlled professional production studio, I'm out here on location.

Jim: On location.

Jason: In an undisclosed area.

Jim: In an undisclosed area under battlefield conditions. Listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you once a week here at Honey Bee Obscura, where I try to talk about something to do with plain talk beekeeping.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today Podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: Listeners, I've been trying to set this up to this discussion for years. Long, long ago, in a land far, far away, as a much younger man, I had the distinct opportunity to visit, I don't know, maybe a dozen times. When Africanized bees were coming through Central America and headed to the US and the beekeepers in this country were all agog about what we're going to do, what we're going to do, I had the opportunity to travel a lot. Rosario, anytime I went there, we were always accompanied by veterinarians who were on the staff. Apparently, if I'm wrong, I wish you'd point it out, my understanding was that in Mexico beekeeping is considered to be a veterinarian undertaking, not so much an entomology undertaking as it is here. Right or wrong?

Rosario: Exactly. I think it's mainly because veterinarians are in charge of detecting disease in the first place and then administering treatment in a systematic way.

Jim: Rosario and Jason, all those years ago, when I had the opportunity to travel and see Mexican beekeeping as it was undergoing this change, it was always with veterinarians who were very helpful and always very officious. It was interesting, Rosie, because I would go to these remote bee yards somewhere in Campeche or the Yucatan or wherever and there would frequently be these huge cattle breeds there with aggressive bulls and whatever.

Then the beehives were isolated behind barbed fences. The veterinarians were always very calm and cool and I was standing up in the back of the truck. I'm not going to stand down there with a 2,000-pound bull who was snorting and blowing, and casually talk about bees. That was my experience. At this point, you said that you've had some classes helping with understanding bee diseases. Can you tell me what diseases that Mexican beekeepers are looking for? Are they similar to the concerns that we have in the US?

Rosario: The ones that they listed as more impactful in Mexico are Varroa, American foulbrood, and chalkbrood, and the stonebrood.

Jim: Stonebrood. I don't see that too often here, but stonebrood is in the books. It's another fungal disease, I think, that's basically the causative agent--

Rosario: Over here, it's also a little more rare too than chalkbrood, but yes, it gets listed as something that you have to check.

Jim: Jason, is the bees back there okay? Everything look all right in the bee yard? Do you see any stonebrood on my landing boards there?

Jason: I don't see any stonebrood. There might be a bee that didn't make it. If only we had a honey bee veterinarian.

Jim: Well, we don't. We've got one in training though.

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Jim: Listeners, let's take a short break and hear from our sponsors, and we'll come back and pick up with this discussion that we're having about beekeeping in Mexico and the similarities to beekeeping in the US.

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Jim: Rosario, when you visit beekeepers in your training program, are they commercial beekeepers? Are they small-scale beekeepers? Are they big yards, small yards? What's your best guess there?

Rosario: Oh my God. I think that's a complex question in first place. The ones that I have visited are for teaching. They are very small and they are a little affected by the management because they get used for teaching. Their main purpose is not really producing.

Jim: It's mainly a teaching lab that you're going to. Do you find the bees to be unfriendly? Do you have enough of a bee background to have some confidence about yourself around bees? Are these stingy bees? Are they fairly docile bees?

Rosario: When we went to our class 4 diagnosis, we really had to make sure that we were covered. We had to make sure that there were not any way for a bee to enter the suit, and we had to be prepared with smoke too. When we opened some of the beehives, I noticed that some of the bees would just attack, no matter how careful or slow you were. Some of them would attack and of course sting. That's the only thing I would say that is the main concern about the aggressivity of the bees.

Jim: Rosie, I'll tell you-- I'm sorry, I shouldn't call you Rosie. I've known you for a long time. I need to call you Rosario. Rosario, the bees you're describing are feisty and a bit stingy, and we probably wouldn't be all that happy to have them here in residential areas.

Rosario: No.

Jim: In preparation for this discussion, I did read that the beekeeping industry in Mexico has made concerted efforts to change and become more cooperative with these bees that are feisty and a bit more defensive, doing things by wearing heavier protective gear, and as you said, always being covered up, always being protected.

Rosario: Yes, and make sure that you don't have holes or whatever.

Jim: Also maybe not have the bees so close to settlements, to buildings, or to other aspects of Mexican society that would be upset by having feisty bees around.

Rosario: Also because that way you make sure that they don't get toxins or contaminated by other stuff that should not be in the hives, for example.

Jim: Once you finish your training program, will you be comfortable telling Mexican beekeepers what to do about Varroa, for instance, or making recommendations on treatment plans? Would that be part of your training program?

Rosario: Yes, I think so. Right now, I only know the basics for Varroa.

Jim: I think when you come back and visit the US here, and just so you know, listeners, Rosario does make multiple trips, and Jason makes multiple trips, they're long-distance while she's in this training program, but you can come to my secret yard, and I'll let you have a look at my bees, that are sometimes testy, but they're usually pretty good.

Mexico is known for its honey production, even now, because we didn't know, when I was making all those trips back in the '80s, '90s, what would be left of any beekeeping industry in Central America or in North America, even here. Life has gone on. In fact, as bizarre as it might seem, the Africanized bees, I still call them Africanized, are seemingly good honey producers if you can just get by the fact that you've got to be covered up and use copious amounts of smoke. Jason, on any of your trips, Jason, did you have the chance to see bees or be exposed to them in any way?

Jason: I've seen some European honey beekeeping operations, but I think the most interesting thing that I've seen down there from my own personal point of view is the Melipona-based beekeeping, which is a different species of honeybee. It's the stingless honeybee that used to make up the honey industry of pre-contact America. The Maya, the Aztecs, they were using this species of honeybee called Melipona. They don't sting, but they do bite.

If you have a beard, like I do, they will get stuck in your beard, and they will bite, and it does hurt, so don't get them angry at you. Melipona honey is more watery than honey produced by European honeybees. Anyway, today, the European honeybee honey is used as a sweetener, is a food, just like here in the US, but the Melipona honey is usually packaged and sold as a treatment for eyes. Sold as eye drops.

Jim: Oh, so it's a medicinal treatment more than a food product.

Rosario: Yes. It's a little more rare too, to find.

Jason: Yes. Honey production for the Melipona, as far as I know, it's still basically destructive. You destroy the hive to harvest the honey.

Jim: That's unfortunate, because all those hundreds of years ago, that was what beekeeping was like. I still know US beekeepers who said that they destroyed hundreds of bee trees when they were young to get to the honey and the wax that was in it. He said, we gave no thought to the bees that were left laying on the ground and their nest destroyed. It's a unique situation. We don't have Meliponids in the US, and so there's no Meliponid honey here. Jason has brought some honey sample back, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet. Just flipping it up and down, it is watery. Do you like it as well, Rosario? Have you had both Meliponid honey and European bee honey?

Rosario: I sincerely don't remember if I ever tried Meliponid because I know it's around, but I don't have any recollection. Also, the market is completely flooded by the regular honey from Apis mellifera. It is more common to buy that one than the Melipona.

Jim: I guess I could say, help me out if I'm wrong here, that Mexico is one of the largest producers of honey in the world. I think they're number four. My quick reference here is that China, Argentina, and India are larger, but Mexico produces about 60,000 metric tons of honey per year. Most of that's exported to the European market, apparently, but some does come to the US. About half the honey they produce is exported, so there's some significant undertaking there. You have a really nice climate for it right now with a lot of-

Rosario: It is.

Jim: -floral types and economic and bioflora-type plants that are nectar producers, so it seems to be a good place. The thing is that they're stunner, stingy bees, but you got to get used to that. We still have some instances of those attacks in this country, but they're not anything that they used to be. Apparently, I'm just talking out of church now. I only got this from the literature, Rosario, that there are breeding programs to try to calm this down and to have some of the bees there that are more manageable and then more friendly.

Rosario: I have heard about those programs.

Jim: It's about 40,000 beekeepers in Mexico.

Rosario: 40,000 beekeepers?

Jim: I just got that straight from the web.

Rosario: I also was reading that there are more than 1 million hives in Mexico.

Jim: 1 million beekeepers?

Rosario: More than 1 million hives.

Jim: Oh, 1 million-

Jason: Hives.

Jim: -hives. Oh, you scared me to death. I thought that number's terrible.

Rosario: No. It's more like 1.7 million. I was wondering if you, for the diagnosis, you wanted to hear about the steps or something. I don't know if that would be interesting for the podcast or not.

Jim: Let me have it.

Rosario: In Mexico, at my program, when we went to the hive, they were trying to teach us how to diagnose properly. For that, there is a series of steps that you have to do in order to first have a presumptive diagnosis in order to decide what kind of test to perform and then get the definite diagnosis. That would be the flow that you have to follow. First, when you arrive to the apiary, you have to have a little interview with the owner or the person that is more in contact with the work with the bees and ask them everything you can about how the beehives look, how they are disposed in the space, where they are.

If they have water, if they have correct separation from the floor. If this person that takes care of the bees, which sometimes is not really the owner, is more like a person that works with the bees and knows about them, knows that something is happening to the bees, they will tell you that maybe the population has decreased or that they have been finding-- For example, you can ask them if they have found dead larvae at the entrance, or if in the checkings, if they have detected weird odors or weird sounds in the beehive, because some of the bacterial and fungal infections will primarily be detected that way.

Before we know exactly where they are, we will see these larvae by the entrance, or signs of diarrhea or sounds in the panels. If you shake them and they sound, they also indicate that something's wrong with the beehive, et cetera. Part of these first steps are making sure that the person taking care of the bees tells you as much as they can of whatever they have observed themselves. Because they are in contact with the bees, they will be able to know any difference in a period. Then you as a veterinarian have to check more closely what is really happening.

Jim: Rosario, you're talking to the beekeeper, the owner of the bees, and you're making those decisions and getting that kind of information, and looking for these things, the sound, the smell, what the larvae on the landing board, something along that line. Did that beekeeper call you to come out, or do the veterinary staff go to the bee yards on a schedule of some kind?

Rosario: It is recommended to have a schedule, but many times, they also just call you because sometimes it's when they have problems, when they try to check what's happening. That's also another critical point because it's like when they are calling you, you also have to ask what they think it's happening. It will be part of the analysis, which is the recollection of information.

Jim: You have a class coming up. You'll be taking a bee class in your training program. Is that correct?

Rosario: Yes. There's going to be a more dedicated class for bees, which will be recollecting everything I have already studied plus everything that I haven't.

Jim: Rosario, we'll contact you again sometime next fall after you've been through the bee class. You've already been through the diagnostic class, but we'll contact you after you've been to the bee class and see how your bee experience is coming as a doctor of veterinary medicine and discoverer of bee diseases and problems. I've enjoyed talking with you. Jason, thanks for coming in and backing everything up and checking my bees for me back there.

Jason: Yes, sir.

Jim: Bye-bye.

Jason: Bye.

Rosario: Bye-bye

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