Fred Dunn: Bees, YouTube and Photography (316)

316 - Fred Dunn: Bees, YouTube and Photography

Cindy: Hi, this is Cindy from Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association in upstate New York and--

Crowd: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Thank you, Cindy and the Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association for that wonderful opening from New York State.

Becky: My favorite openings are either with groups of bees that the beekeepers out there with or groups of beekeepers. It was great to hear them.

Jeff: Yes it was. Thank you Cindy and team. Becky, it's that time of year. It's really difficult to get too excited about going out to the bee yard. It's cold and it's not much fun, but the promise of spring is not too far off.

Becky: Most of us shouldn't be going, at least in the colonies. It's maybe okay to look at them from afar, but it is a tough time of year, especially for those of us who aren't tech-savvy and don't have sensors, so don't know exactly what's going on in those colonies.

Jeff: You have to use your detective skills, right? You have to go out there and look in the snow, see what's going on. There was a time I would beg, borrow, not steal an infrared camera, and look at the side of the hive to look at the heat. That was always very interesting.

Becky: That's one way to do it. Hopefully, beekeepers are monitoring safely so that they don't disturb their wintering bees.

Jeff: I'll share a little nerdiness here. Before sensors, when I was a paramedic I would go out there with my stethoscope and-

Becky: Stethoscope. [laughs]

Jeff: -put my stethoscope on the side of the hive and pound on the other side and listen for the hum.

Becky: That's great. I can just go low tech if I pop the winter cover off, if there's moisture on or the moisture board that I use, then if there's little puddle of water. I know those girls are alive down there, so that's one way to do it too.

Jeff: At what point do you decide to go and check and replace food? Or can you really check the food supply if it's really cold? Are they eating?

Becky: The way I keep bees in Minnesota? I have no opportunity to really give them any food. Some Minnesota beekeepers will give some kind of a sugar cake or something like that, but my colonies aren't set up like that, so I just make sure they're of weight in the fall so that if they made it through their stores, it literally just probably means they're sick. If they're a normal, healthy colony when they go into winter, they're going to have plenty to get them through to April.

Jeff: Oh, very good.

Becky: Jeff, enough about if my bees are hungry or starving or cold. Let's talk about who we're having on the show today.

Jeff: [laughs] Let's get off the topic of weather. On today's show, we have YouTube beekeeper and educator Fred Dunn.

Becky: I've never met Fred before, but I've seen his work and I am really excited to talk to him today.

Jeff: You'll have to forgive us if we go down the rabbit hole of photography, Becky. It's a dangerous slope because he is a fine photographer and he has a large photography background. If you ever get to one of his presentations and or his website, you'll see the quality of his work. It's well worth it.

Becky: As long as he doesn't talk about taking pictures while riding a bike. I think we're going to be able to handle it. I think we're going to be okay. I'm ready for the deep dive on bee pictures. If he starts talking about while riding a bike, then I might have to just interject with some bee stuff.

Jeff: Fair enough, Becky, I'm hurt, but fair enough. We'll hear from Fred and no bikes, right after this word from our sponsors.

[music]

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Jeff: Hey, welcome back everybody. Thank you to our sponsors. Sitting across a great big virtual BeekeepingToday Podcast table, we want to welcome back Frederick Dunn. Fred, welcome back to Beekeeping TodayPodcast.

Fred Dunn: Hi Jeff and Becky, thanks so much for having me. For those of you who don't know who I am, I'm Frederick Dunn. The Way to Bee is the podcast name. YouTube channel is Frederick Dunn. I live in the northeastern part of the United States. Northwestern part of the state of Pennsylvania. Glad to be here.

Becky: Welcome, Fred. It's a pleasure to officially meet you today.

Fred: Yes. Thank you. Becky.

Jeff: I love your channel. It's so well done. The video quality and the photography is exceptional. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you got into bees?

Fred: I am retired from the Navy first of all. I have been all over the world and seen lots of wildlife. We'll fast-track forward to the bee interest. That was really when there was all this discussion about colony collapse disorder. Of course, everyone heard about that. In 2006, I started watching documentaries. I also happened to be a photographer and a cinematographer, so I wanted to document some of those conditions that they were talking about, so I volunteered to do that. I contacted my state Department of Agriculture here in Harrisburg.

They were able to link me up with an inspector that I could not ride with, but I could meet at different apiaries that were going to be inspected. Of course, with the permission of the beekeeper that owned the apiary. I got a crash course in bees right there. I had no background in honeybees other than that my grandmother in Chester, Vermont specifically she kept bees. I didn't know what her equipment was for. I borrowed her bee gloves to collect snakes. [laughter] As a kid.

Becky: That's probably the best use of bee gloves, actually.

Fred: When I was little, my nickname was Snake. It wasn't because I was cool it was because I was always carrying them around. [laughter] Then that one thing led to another. The inspector, who I owe a great debt of gratitude to, recommended that I keep bees, that I could keep bees of my own, and then I would have them local, so I could take pictures and stare at them all day long. That's how it got started. I didn't start YouTubing until 2007. Actually, that was just a year after I started keeping bees. I just thought, like everyone else, "You get your bees, oh my gosh, everybody's going to want to see this."

Then you put it out on YouTube, that's why we have 5000 bee-related YouTube channels today. [laughter] Back then there weren't a lot of people sharing about bees. Social media became an outlet for me to share about chickens. I'm also Fred's fine fowl and free range chickens.org, and I'm a poultry technician. We talked about that the last time. Kim was very interested in the chickens and everything, and we miss him, of course.

Jeff: Kim was very much into chickens and ducks and fowl.

Fred: Yes. I've had a variety of things here on my property. I'm in a rural location, so I can do pretty much anything I want to. My wife is very understanding and very forgiving. She never questions why there's a company here putting up a fence. She doesn't ask why there's a big package that showed up that has oversized eggs in it that take 51 days to incubate until we have Australian emus running around the plot. [laughter] I've always been interested in nature and wildlife. It's natural. Honeybees are so fascinating, but I'm easily distracted by other things. I pursued honeybees seriously as far as studying them and ended up of course taking the program at Cornell at their dice lab for the master beekeeper program.

I wanted to know as much as I could about bees, but of course, I didn't want to become an entomologist because that sounded like work and a lot of book knowledge. ]laughter] I am in the university of direct experience with bees and so I show up with all kinds of camera equipment and spent a lot of time on my own engaging with bees. Then of course now talking to people like you and going to expos like the North American Honeybee Expo we have coming up in January. I give talks now all over the country.

It's a great way to share what I learn and observe and of course, puts me in touch with experts that then fill the gaps for me knowledge-wise and then give me ideas that I might want to go out and document through cinematography.

Jeff: Your cinematography and your photo work is really nice and I appreciate that immensely. Coming from a family of photographers, my father was a photographer in the Army and the Signal Corps and he always had these great photos of the atomic tests in Nevada that we used to go up in the attic and sneak a peek at but anyways.

Fred: Hold the phone. You went into your attic and snuck a peek at atomic tests?

Jeff: The photos, yes, he had.

Fred: Oh, the photos?

Jeff: Yes. No, no, no. There wasn't little micro explosions up in a box.

Fred: We're going to stare at this. There's going to be a nuclear burst and we're going to look at it.

Jeff: What happened at a little town of Lakewood? That's really exciting, Fred. The way that you're able to incorporate your background into presenting and educating others is a great way of using your skills.

Fred: Thanks. It absolutely is-- As they say, photos are worth 1000 words or whatever, but it also takes the heat off of me when it comes to giving a presentation. Sure, we have a lot of academics out there that have done fantastic research and have a lot of incredible knowledge. I know ahead of time I can't compete with what they know nor do I want to. I do presentations, for example, that just don't hurt your brain. I call it infotainment. If I get up there and I show you some image and get your mind going and show you bees in a way, because let's be honest, there's very little that's new in the world about bees.

We can go back and look at something written 100 years ago and find that it's an observation that we think as new beekeepers, we're observing this for the first time. What kind of edge would we have, the technology that we carry with us. Today people have phones in their pockets that are stronger than the top-ranked computers back in the '90s. We have a lot of capability with us, which means we have a witness with us wherever we go. The other part of this is that the photographic equipment, now I know Jeff just mentioned growing up with his dad was a photographer.

My father was a photographer, which is how I knew I never wanted to be one. He lived in the dark room. We had a dark room for black and white negatives. We had a dark room for color, we had a dark room for printing. Everything smelled like hypo and fixer and developer. I'm pretty sure we didn't have enough ventilation. There were all kinds of things going on.

Jeff: That might explain a lot of my behavioral problems.

Fred: Were you touching the stain fingernails from the the developer? Anyway, but digital came along. The other thing is I'm an oil painter, so I have an artistic compositional eye. When I look at photographic light, I'm actually looking at it from an illustrator or a painter's perspective. In this way, I think it adds interest to some of the photos that I take and few things make me happier than to present a photo on a large screen and hear a response from the people in the audience. That's why I do it because I want that embedded image. I want them to think that's really interesting.

I'm getting you closer and clearer than we ever could have before unless you had some astronomical budget and you could get in there with super micro macro lenses, but we're at micro macro now. Those who are shutterbugs that might understand what I'm talking about. A macro lens is a one-to-one on the sensor of the camera. If I had an ant or a bee or something else that was in the Hymenoptera group and if it's in front of your lens, it's the same size in life that it is on the sensor. We've gone beyond that. Now I have a microscope in my hands that shoots 46 megapixels that can stop action. You're not stopping action on a microscope slide.

We also have faster shutter speeds than ever before and why is it, because we got rid of the shutter. We had a limitation in shutter, especially the DSLRs also 1/8000th of a second is what you could do. Now we go beyond a 1/30000th of a second. It looks like bees are pinned in the air. It's the most incredible stop-action capability. Now we just have to think it. We need time, place, and opportunity. Now we can do captures that are truly mind-blowing to some degree. Then that sparks, why do they do that? We're also seeing things that we otherwise couldn't.

You could spend hours staring at things. I was one of those kids outside. I was supposed to come home, I was always late. My dad always had to find me somewhere. I was in a creek. I was in storm drains. I was bad. I was a really bad kid. Because I would see something and I wanted to understand it, so I needed to see its behavior for an extended period of time and I would just lose time, but we're limited. We can only see movement so fast. We can only see things so small. The other end of this, aside from the macro and micro work, we can see behaviors at a higher frame rate.

I don't know if you've ever shot high speed even just 16 millimeter film, let alone the 35. You had to have a huge budget to make slow-motion sequences. Now we don't need a budget. We have digital gear and it's all digital data. People often say, "Oh, I got great footage. No, you don't even know what footage is." [laughter] Footage is what we used to really spend the big bucks on. You got to capture, you got data because everybody that's saying on their phone, look at the great footage I just got, where's the footage?

Now we can shoot at 1,000 frames per second. Try that with film. Remember the guys that hand-cranked the old early films, they would have to really start cranking. Then you need a lot of light, you need special lensing, you need wide open apertures. Then you get this shallow depth of field. Now you're chasing things with your gear. Overcoming obstacles and using the technology to its fullest capability is what really excites me because then you get a chance to get something, even audible captures, so full wave audio.

Now I also put special audio gear on the front element of my lens because I don't want to capture the sound from a foot and a half away. I want that mic to be also as close to whatever the subject matter is as the front element of the lens. Now we've also done what we've immersed them in the audio. If anybody has ever studied cinematography, they're going to tell you audio's more important than the video. That's why you bring audio experts in to get those captures. You have the cinema guys and they're second tier really, which didn't make sense to me, but apparently, if you blow the audio, you've blown everything.

Becky: When's the documentary coming out?

Fred: The documentary. I'm glad you said that actually because I'm not making a documentary because I'm just documenting what I see every day and obviously I'm not independent like that. I have had my sequences used by bigger organizations like Warner Brothers and Discover and Animal Planet. I'm super excited whenever that happens. It might sound like I'm bragging because I am. [laughter]

Jeff: You're allowed to.

Fred: I thought it was fake because I was contacted by an AP from Warner Brothers. They own Discover. They own Animal Planet. I'm just going to explain this a little bit. When I realized it was real, they wanted video sequences. They found me how, through YouTube. YouTube has been this great bridge to other great minds in entomology. Also, it allows us to work together with other people that are after cinematic sequences. I've given away a lot of my stuff. Don't ask me for free stuff, but I've given away.

If it's an academic group, if they're doing a study, if I have a master's student, somebody that's working on their PhD and needs a specific sequence, audio or video, or both, I give them to them for free. That's because I support education. If it's a commercial venture, I'm going to charge fat stacks. [laughter] When it came to this Warner Brothers saying it was Animal Planet nature's strangest mysteries solved, it feels like it just happened. It came out in 2019. They bought, are you ready for this, eight seconds of, am I going to say footage of data.

They bought eight seconds of my stuff. If I were a bull rider, that's all I needed to get the trophy or the buckle or whatever they give a bull rider. Eight seconds is eight seconds. I felt like I should have it on a t-shirt. [laughter] That is it. That is my only bragging point. That is my only documentary segment that's ever gone out there. I just wanted people to know that there should be a trophy. There isn't, but there should be or a T-shirt. I don't know.

Jeff: I was one of those guys swapping out 35-frame cassettes on my Nikon F5 and trying not to drop them while I set it up and go again. The digital was just coming on strong as I was getting out of doing a lot of photography. What you're talking about a thousand frames a second and even faster. Even in the Nikon, I think we were at one 2000th of a second or something like that on the frame camera. I can't remember though. I can't remember. My question always comes when you start doing the micro and the microphotography is the depth of field.

Is that still a big issue? When you're shooting those high frame rates and you have the high-quality cameras, how do you deal with the very narrow depth of field with a very small subject?

Fred: I'm really glad you brought that up because I want people to understand this is extremely difficult and only the top tier image capturing people should be even attempting it. The frustration levels are so off the chart that they need to realize because here's the thing, whenever you go super slow motion, which is the 999 point whatever frames per second, when you're doing that, there is no autofocus. We're manually focusing. Just as Jeff said, we don't want to get too nerdy about photography here, but you have to shut your f-stop...

Becky: Oh, we're so past that point buddy. We're so past that point.

Fred: Thanks, Becky. I'll pick it. When you have it wide open, so because I have cinematic lenses that shoot at F1.4, okay, so that's wide open, but you have a razor-thin depth of field. For people that don't understand what we're even talking about, let's say I was taking your portrait and I focused on your iris, even your eyelashes would be out of focus at that range. Now we have to really stop it down. I do not disclose how I manage lighting. That's because these are tricks of the trade that distinguish our work.

Still photography, that's one thing we can use speed lights, we can really ramp it up. I use three groups, the three-- Jeff mentioned Nikon and I use The Nikon Creative Lighting System. Whatever their top gear is, I just get it. Don't even ask. My wife doesn't care and she won't be listening to this podcast. [laughter] I reflect sunlight. I set up an array of mirrors and I capture sunlight and I rake that across my subject matter. I'll give a little tip. I set up the focal distance from that front element. Now when we're getting, Jeff said micro macro, here's the problem.

You can't have on-camera lighting at all because your lens is going to cast a shadow on your subject, which just happens to be three-quarters of an inch from the front element. That presents a lot of problems. You have to be a stealthy photographer, you have to understand your subject matter. You're definitely not going to be photographing pit vipers that way. I like to do spiders and things. The other thing is we have to do tricks to reduce our threat level to whatever we're hoping to video or photograph.

We have to get light in there, which means the light modifiers have to be way out also in front of the lens, which increases the weight and complexity of your rig and can you shoot in rain and can you be out there in all weather? I'm also an Nikon photographer. In case somebody asks, I use Nikon gear, Sony gear, I use whatever is going to get me the image I want in the conditions I'm about to shoot in and I will be in the rain. I have underwater equipment, thank you Tax dollars back in when I was in the Navy and Nikon was our underwater imaging system.

You have to manually be aware and you have to move fast so just people can't see me. They're just listening. Let's say we put a popsicle sticker, something on the front of your camera lens. You mark the focal distance where the focal plane will be for your subject. If it's a bee, now we hold the camera out and wherever that popsicle stick ends is where that bee needs to be to be included in the sequence. If you're shooting really fast and the bee's in flight, you're going like this. Then you get back in post-production and you start yelling because it's in focus and you got the movement you wanted and you push through the brush following this bee in flight.

These things are incredibly exciting. I hope people understand that. People that have seen presentations often don't understand how I get the sequences I get. That's also part of the excitement too because it's time and you just have to be very committed to what you're trying to do and what you're trying to capture and be willing to ruin equipment and yourself to get the shot. [laughter]

Jeff: That's always the photographer's creed, right? Get the shot at all costs.

Fred: I don't know, I've met photographers who just abandoned their clients altogether when a rainstorm comes in and stuff like that. While we go out in the storm they're leaving. We all know each other because I like storms and drama and the dynamic that that brings and the lighting that it brings and everything else.

Jeff: For our listeners, I promise we're going to get right back to the subject of bees but first, a quick word from our sponsors.

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Becky: Welcome back everybody. Fred, before we get back to bees, I have to ask, how do I get all this propolis off my camera lens on my phone?

Fred: Propolis off your camera lens on your phone is isopropyl alcohol. That's it. I use alcohol lens wipes. It does dissolve away the propolis. It can take some time. Also, there are plastic scrapers that are designed for lenses so that you don't score your lens. You have to be very careful about any kind of physical removal. The chemical removals also have to be, you want to check in with whoever made the lens because there's lens coatings that are sometimes there. I have fluoride lens coatings, for example. You can blow your warranty if it's on the actual lens. If it's on the camera body and parts like that, isopropyl alcohol works really well.

Jeff: I always get really nervous about touching the lens, especially within a chemical.

Fred: Yes, of course, the goal is Becky, don't get propolis on your camera.

Becky: Yes, that's going to continue to happen. If you've seen the quality of pictures that I do take, you'll know that the propolis isn't a real big deal. It's not a real game changer in what I'm producing with my phone. I'm leaving the really good pictures to people like you two.

Fred: The other thing is too, I always recommend that people wear nitrile gloves and things like that. When you're manipulating frames and doing that work, if you've got camera equipment there also then of course peel those off of your hands before you touch your gear. There is some voice-activated camera equipment too. People like to use GoPros. Those are voice-activated now so you can be hands-off on some of your gear. Those are very important things to think about. I recently had a GoPro 13 with a macro lens on it that I was checking out.

I had a cookoff we call it, when the bees all of a sudden get excited and don't want you around which is amazing to me because I know they just love it when I want to look inside the hive. It was an overcast day, stormy conditions, and they actually embedded their stingers in the body of the GoPro. I have never had that happen to any camera in all the years. I've never had a stinger stay with the camera. After the session was done, I got into the house, I counted six stingers and of course, I took out the macro equipment and photographed the stingers and how they were embedded because it was also very interesting to see that they did that.

Jeff: That is interesting because when I was in Mexico years ago and doing photography of the Africanized bees, there were no stingers in any of my equipment. Stingers everywhere else, but not in any of the equipment. I found it really interesting when you had in your video you're showing that.

Becky: How are you going to get the alarm pheromone out of that equipment?

Fred: Here's what I've learned about alarm pheromones. I know a lot of people but, Becky, you are probably way ahead of me on this, but they are so volatile that I find that that dissipates really fast. I know a lot of people just smoke, smoke, smoke everything really quick, and also people talk about if you've had your bee suit on and you went out there and you took a bunch of stings, you go away, you come back the next day, they're still going to come after you because those pheromones are still there, I find that that alarm pheromone, the response to it mitigates very fast.

Part of that is because it's such a volatile pheromone to begin with, that they're really putting that out as soon as they deliver the stinger, sometimes the stinger is coated. They can do it. Maybe you can answer this question. Can they also deliver some alarm pheromone with their mandibles?

Becky: There is alarm pheromone in their head. We recommend not smushing bee heads if you want to keep the defensive response down.

[crosstalk]

Fred: Because they xxxx and mark too. I found that if we just go away for a couple of hours, if you change your equipment or come back, you can also just wipe it down of course with isopropyl again or something like that. I just found that it doesn't stay with you very long. I've never had a repeat response just because I think they're recognizing people. I think if you're the one that was just out there and you're the one that caused a ruckus and you picked up some guard bees, I think that if you send out a stranger with the same suit, if you're testing this theory, put the same suit on a stranger who hasn't been out there yet, let them walk out and the bees still show their attention to you even though you've put on a clean suit.

There are ways to identify if these bees are responding to you now. We know they remember things because they go to specific spots. You can also put a card around your neck with two black dots on it, on a white card, and they go right after that card. You can put that card on different people and see if the bees now go to those different people. There are a lot of ways to feel your way through it because I'm a practical backyard tester, so I come up with these little experiments, see what bees are responding to, and try to distill that from what we think we know to practical demonstration of what the bees really are responding to.

I think that it's very volatile and the alarm pheromone dissipates on its own pretty damn quick. What do you think?

Becky: They are worried, for example, when people bring bee suits with venom and family members are washing the suits, things like that, they've been worried about that as far as low-level introduction for allergies. I've heard that.

Fred: They're worried about those pheromone-- Not the pheromone but the actual venom through osmosis coming through their skin.

Becky: The venom contact and venom and they hypothesize I think in one paper that contact with bee equipment could be a way that venom allergies are introduced to family members.

Fred: Because they definitely do mark it with venom. They do leave venom and streak it on these hard surfaces that they can't get their stingers in because it was all over, Jeff held up his macro lens on his GoPro Hero 13 black edition. Because it's there--

Jeff: Not a sponsor.

[laughter]

Fred: All it does is it desiccates and doesn't really go away. The venom is still there and could be activated just by your sweat glands and things for example.

Becky: It's whether or not the bees can detect it.

Fred: Yes, I think it's very easy to evaluate the bee's sense of that. Again, once the volatiles are not going airborne anymore, I think that their response to it, they'd have to be right on top of it to even sense that. The other thing is in my head, think about the bees. If they were in a constant state of alarm, if these alarm pheromones remain, if you come back later, then you're wearing out your bees because they're in an agitated state for an extended period of time. I think of it as they pull the fire alarm, they all respond, and if one gets a sting that's why you get six stings in rapid succession.

That little part where your glove was open and your sleeve was exposing part of your skin or something or you've got black fuzzy gloves on and you just notice there's a bunch of stingers on it. Again, it would be an easy test to do, come back the next day with the same, some that have the stingers, some that don't, same color, same texture, same everything. See if there is a more defensive response for one glove over the other and it would be very easy to prove on a practical level, I think.

Becky: Yes, I'm guessing they've done it because of all the work on Africanized bees way back in the '70s, '80s. I bet that's out there. I know they were worried about it back then. Anyway, if you're going to test it with the GoPro equipment, that'll be interesting. Let us know. Okay, keep us updated. [laughs]

Fred: For example, what if you go to another hive with the same equipment, and that hive does not respond?

Becky: All the bees are going to have different thresholds for defensive behavior. Our bees are really bred...

[crosstalk]

Fred: Still you’re going to need your camera, you're saying.

Becky: I guess if we were going to put it to a question, my guess is that Africanized bees might be more responsive to the equipment.

Jeff: Good question though. Did you take that camera back out to the bee yard to a different colony?

Fred: I removed all the stingers and cleaned up the camera. After I got all the photo documentation because I needed to use the camera again, I was doing time-lapse sequences. There's a storm coming in so I needed to get everything restored. That's why I took the pictures just to document that it had been streaked with venom and that the stingers were embedded and where they were embedded in that rubberized coating on the camera. Even the transition seal between the lens and the body of the camera had a stinger right in that gasket. It's really interesting.

Becky: Have you always had bears as a problem in your apiary?

Fred: They have not been a problem in the apiary. We should probably say that I live in bear country and in fact this year, bear sightings are way up and they're in our area. They cover a broad area. Bears are easy to educate, good and bad. In other words, if somebody has a relaxed attitude towards bears and lets them feed on their bird feeders or heaven forbid they even feed the bears and then they look at your house. Here's the thing about the way my apiary is set up. It's only 85 feet from my house so it's right here.

The other thing is I spend a lot of time talking to the game commission guys and finding out what bears don't like and try to do my best to provide what they don't like. You could have, for example, spotlights on your apiary that come on when animals come in. Bears if they know an apiary provides them the resources that they need, they march right in and they help themselves.

There are even bears that will swat away at the electric fence chargers. The ticking sound that they make until the ticking sound stops and then they go in and help themselves. Also, it can be defeated when it's raining and things like that. It grounds out your electrical system. What I went to is noisemakers. They're motion-activated noisemakers. I know your people can't see it, but here's an old one. They put out 129 dbs. They're set up for nighttime. They're solar powered so they don't run out so they're not going to leave you high and dry and you put them at different heights and you face them in different directions where you think a bear might approach.

The key is to make a sudden noise that surprises the bear and make some uncomfortable. My goal is to stress them out. This has worked. I put not only 15 noisemakers out, but I put cameras from every angle so we can hopefully document the reaction that the bears have. It turned out to be a one-off. In other words, once the bear initially was startled, it didn't come back. Even though we know if we can smell hunting in the air, we know that we could find our own apiary blindfolded at different times of the year.

The bears certainly can locate your apiary. They could smell it probably a thousand yards away. We don't want to be on their menu. I'm also a little bit motivated to do other things to make bears feel unwelcome. I might be out there at 1:00 in the morning waiting to make a sudden sound that makes the bear feel unwelcome because the last thing you ever want to have to do is shoot one and I certainly don't. All the time I've kept bees here since 2006, we've only had one bear come in and actually he knocked off a landing board.

Just easy, it's a solid bottom board. The landing board's part of it, just an extension. It is extraordinary how powerful they are. The bear was large enough it could sit on the ground and eat out of a bird feeder.

Becky: Wow.

Fred: It was a big one. The big ones are wise. They're a little more careful. It's the young ones that just charge in and they're silly. I did meet one of those this year between the chicken coop and the house and it was trying to get a suet feeder down and I chased it out of the yard, which by the way is a very smart thing to do in opposite land.

[laughter]

Becky: I was going to say wait, what are we telling people?

Fred: I want to make sure you're not supposed to chase a bear but I was willing to take the risk myself and I wanted that bear to have a bad experience.

Jeff: Because you had a camera in hand is probably what you're not seeing.

Becky: Yes. Were you going for the footage?

[laughter]

Fred: No, and there are times when I'm so upset that it'll be the one time that I pull down some cameras to charge their batteries or something and that's when something will go through. We get enough though, we are lucky enough that we get some really interesting wildlife behavior and especially the wildlife's behavior around bees. Skunks, for example, we have skunks, raccoons, possums. I like skunks being around because, for example, they're going to eat the yellow jackets that are in the ground. They're tenacious.

You may often hear someone say that if they have to lift their front legs off the ground and expose their stomach, that's too high. In other words, they won't do that. Yes, they do and that's the beauty of video sequences. I went out to set up a night cam one night, the skunk was already there. Then I handheld another camera that had night vision and I just creeped closer and closer. For those who are wondering, the effective range of a skunk is 10 feet.

Becky: Oh, no.

Fred: It gave me a great opportunity to just sit tight and video everything the skunk did, everywhere it went. That's how we figured out 16 to 18 inches, they can reach your landing board, scratch at the entrance at night, the bees come out, but I found a way to foil that. That's one of the things that I share in my presentation when I go around to the Honey Bee Expo or I'm about to go to the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association to present there. Also down in Texas, in Austin, the Texas Beekeepers are also hosting me there to give a presentation.

These are the types of things that I show in my presentations is, first of all, what's the problem? What are some of the solutions we came up with? Then video sequences demonstrating the solution success or failure. If it's not a solution, obviously we have to come up with something else. We have figured out skunks pretty good. A skunk will come and feed on a beehive for hours at a time. They are a serious kind of pets for your bees. We can defeat that by getting your hives up a little higher off the ground.

Becky: Just so beekeepers know, if your bees all of a sudden are more defensive, look for scratches on the front of the equipment.

Fred: Muddy paw prints and wet grass underneath.

Becky: Those scratches indicate to us that there's a skunk feeding on your bees and it will definitely lower the defensive threshold for that colony. That might be the reason why all of a sudden they're a little bit more ornery and it's with good reason.

Fred: That's a great point, Becky, that we need to know what's going on in our apiary when we're not there. The other thing is those bees, this has been studied also, the colonies that are stressed at night when they should be in a calm state. I was talking to Dr. Tom Seele about that, and they were agitating bees at night through vibration and keeping them from having continued peace and calm. It did reduce the foraging capability of the bees, or it even would reduce the life expectancy of forages and bees because they're more stressed and therefore wearing themselves out by being more active than they otherwise should be.

There are sub-lethal challenges that your bees face if you're allowing nature to just harass your bees.

Jeff: Just like us, if we're awake all night, we're grumpier in the day.

Fred: Oh, yes. Let's say there was a leaf blower outside your window or something.

Jeff: For instance say, for instance.

Fred: Stress is not good for us. It's not good for animals.

Jeff: As a YouTube presenter and as a presenter, the national and regional conferences, is there anything that you've learned from your viewers, your followers that have surprised you?

Fred: Here's a good thing. No one is smarter than everyone. The cool part of having an audience of viewership that you communicate with, it's very important because there are viewers that are-- They might be a top tier researcher, entomologist or something who just happens to cross the video, says, "Hey, I know the answer to that," and they reach out and fill you in. I do get people that bring things to my attention that I've never heard of, and then that leads me down that path of discovery where I need to find out more about it so that I can speak in an articulate way about it and give information that is well grounded and like it to be grounded in science.

Has there been someone that's come along and done something that really just opened my eyes like, oh my gosh, it's amazing. I wish that that had happened. Instead, it's little teasers or what ifs or why do you think this happens? Then that leads us to find the experts that can fill those gaps for us. Just nothing right off the top of my head comes out other than I wish I'd known this in advance, I could have given it some thought. Does anyone really-- No.

[laughter]

Fred: I'm sure after we get off, I'm going to think of someone and that person's probably sending it home going, what about the time I-

Becky: Just why?

Fred: -stayed before apiary with my idea?

Jeff: That's right.

[laughter]

Becky: I will say, I was just at the Tennessee Beekeepers Association, lovely beekeepers. I had a really a serious conversation with one of the beekeepers who said he knew an awful lot. He was very, very smart. We were discussing something that I had said and he was informing me in a very good way. He said, "I just want one piece of information when I go to these conventions. I'm just looking for that one thing."

I think that when I hear you talk and I hear you talk about the experts or the PhDs, I think that the truth is that we need to hear from the people who have their eyes and ears and hands in the bees all the time. Because a lot of time that's the knowledge that we need to bring to beekeepers and share with them. It's obviously that you are excelling at that and I hope that whoever isn't subscribing to your podcast and YouTube channel signs up after hearing this.

Fred: Well, thanks. I love that endorsement. Here's one other reasons, every Friday I do a question and answer video, which sounds super boring and some people will never watch it because it's me sitting where I'm sitting right now and responding to questions. The thing that you said, these old timers, they want one new thing. They want to go to a presentation and come out a little deeper than they were before. That's what I promised people. I tell them when they come in, if you do not learn one new thing in this presentation, I will pay for your free cup of coffee, which is right out there at the end of the day. [laughter]

If it's the Honey Bee Expo, I will pay for your free cup of coffee and the big muffin that's going to be out there provided by Cameron Reynolds and the rest. [laughter] Here's the thing. This is the most exciting, I would say the most exciting thing for anyone who teaches or hopes to teach, to have someone who listened to something you said, who's been around, who knows what's going on, they're not a brand new beekeeper, and they come up to you, they shake your hand and say, I learned not just one new thing, but I'm multiple of new things. That's exciting to me.

Now, does that change the way you keep bees? Does that change your bottom line? No, probably not. I'm not the person that's going to come in and give you sound advice. I'm not going to be like Bob Benny and tell you how to take $100 and make it into 100,000. I am going to hopefully teach you something new that might not be on a practical scale that exciting. If you're interested in nature and living organisms and some of their behaviors and some of the physiology, some of the anatomy and how it works, and I can demonstrate that to you in a way that wows you for a microsecond, then I'm excited and that's exactly why I'm there.

Jeff: I think that's a great way to wrap it up, Fred. We've been talking with Fred Dunn of YouTube fame. Fred, what's your channel, again?

Fred: The channel is, it's cryptic, it's Frederick Dunn.

Jeff: Frederick Dunn.

Fred: Yes. [laughter] You can also just Google, The Way To Bee.

Becky: The Way To Bee.

Fred: You'll find the podcast and of course my channel that way too.

Jeff: Fred, thank you for joining us this afternoon and look forward to talking to you again down the road.

Fred: Thank you both, Becky and Jeff. I really enjoyed myself today. Thanks.

Becky: Thanks so much, Fred.

[music]

Jeff: Well, obviously Becky, I enjoyed talking to Fred. He has a YouTube channel too about bees.

Becky: And a podcast about bees. [laughter] Well, I enjoyed talking to him too, and I don't even have that special photographer interest that you do, so I think that our listeners are probably pretty excited to learn more about Fred or they already know all about him and they were just happy to hear from him again.

Jeff: Absolutely. I think this time of year, people are thinking about the bees and getting ready. With the convenience and availability of really decent photographic gear as Fred was talking about, even in our pockets with our various phones, the ability of those cameras are just getting amazing anymore. It's really good to hear from a professional photographer as Fred is, and to understand what really goes into making a really impressive photo that he can do and others can do. It's a good thing to do and it's a good hobby to pursue along with your bees.

Becky: We didn't even talk about it, but getting that camera out when you're going through the bees and inspecting your colony, taking some good shots if you're confused can really help you work with your mentors later on to figure out what was going on in the colony, or even just taking some pictures and then spending a little time looking through them. Because you feel a little bit rushed when you're in inspection. What a great tool for beekeepers.

Jeff: It is. I highly recommend keeping that phone handy, taking as many photos as you can. You can always delete them real quick, it's not like it's rolls of film. Well, that about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcast or wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank Betterbee and our regular long-time sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you the Beekeeping Today Podcast listener for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments on our website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot everybody.

[00:50:23] [END OF AUDIO]