The Spotted Lantern Fly and Bad Honey with Dr. Robyn Underwood (S5, E50)

S5, E50 – The Spotted Lantern Fly and Bad Honey with Dr. Robyn Underwood

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

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You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com. Hey, everybody. Thanks again for joining. If you are listening on the day this episode is released, happy Memorial Day. I hope you're enjoying the day with family, friends, and/or the bees. [chuckles] Hey, Kim will be along in just a few moments. You know you can help us open the next episode of Beekeeping Today podcast, just like you've heard others do this past month or two. Just send us a recording captured on your phone, tablet, or computer's voice memo app. Welcome listeners to the show.

Include who you are, how many bees you keep, and your greeting. We love it, and we know other listeners love it too. In fact, we'd love to hear from our beekeeping listeners from other parts of world. We want to hear from you too. Have you ever tasted your honey and thought it's a little bit off, or perhaps a lot off? That the flavor was different, or even awful? If you are along the East Coast of the United States, and even part of the Midwest, check to see if you have the spotted lanternfly in your state or local area. The spotted lanternfly is an invasive leafhopper insect from China that feeds on the saps of trees and, especially loves grapes.

Today's guest, Dr. Robyn Underwood of Penn State's Lopez-Uribe Lab has researched the spotted lanternfly. If you live in a location of the spotted lanternfly, then what you may be tasting, what your bees may be collecting is the "honey" created from the sweet honeydew excrement from the spotted lanternfly. Eww, sounds wonderful, doesn't it? You would want to stay tune because you may be dealing with this pest very soon. It is already in 13 East Coast states, and spreading north, south, and west.

As I teased in the last episode, make sure you keep listening to the podcast as we're making a big announcement next week. That's all I can say. Let's get to our chat with Dr. Robyn Underwood about the sticky subject of the spotted lanternfly, but first a quick word from our sponsors.

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Jeff: While you're at the strong microbial site, make sure you click on and subscribe to their newsletter, The Hive, full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates.

Everybody, welcome back. Sitting across the virtual Zoom table right now is Dr. Robyn Underwood of Penn State University Extension service. Did I get that right? More or less? Close?

Robyn: It is a little confusing, we call it Penn State Extension. Just a year ago, I was at Penn State University, so they're all glommed together.

Jeff: The important thing is you're in Penn State, Pennsylvania state. Welcome to Beekeeping Today podcast.

Kim: Jeff, I had the opportunity to listen to Robyn talk about the subject we're going to cover today when she was at the Tri-County Beekeepers meeting in Wooster, Ohio. That's actually why she's here today because I was so interested. I thought, "No, I know that she needs to share what she has with everybody listening."

Jeff: Robyn, why don't you let everybody know who you are, what you do. I know you'll get it better than I just did.

Robyn: [chuckles] My current position is Extension Educator of apiculture for the state of Pennsylvania, where I have the best job in the world. I get to just talk about bees, read about bees, write about bees all the time. My mission is to make beekeepers lives easier and better beekeeping. In Pennsylvania, we don't have a Master Beekeeper Program, and I don't focus on getting people to start beekeeping. Our clubs around the state do a super good job at that already. I'm really focusing on intermediate and advanced topics.

Some things that I'm really focusing on are organic honey bee colony management. Following the organic standards, but knowing that you can't certify because of the land use requirements, but you can make good choices. One thing I'm focusing on is organic honey bee colony management, which is following the National Organic Programs recommendations. For example, not using synthetics in your colony like amitraz, but you can use oxalic acid, formic acid, and thymol. Doing really good into pretty post management with monitoring for mates, and treating accordingly. That's something I'm really passionate about.

I have a program going that we call EPIQ, E-P-I-Q, which is Education about Production and Insemination of Queens that's in Northeast SARE project where I'm teaching lots and lots of people how to become queen producers, and working on trying to get one person in every state in the Northeast to know how to do instrumental insemination so that in the future, we might be able to have a really nice breeding program as a region.

Those are some things I'm excited about. Before I was an Extension Educator, I was a research professor at Penn State, where I've done 100% research. Before that, I did 100% teaching of biology at Kutztown University, which is the state school in Pennsylvania. I finally landed where I want to be, and the extension is the place to be for sure.

Kim: I have to agree with that. I've worked to extension long enough to know that given the chance, I'd probably go back again. It was, like you said, one of the best jobs in the world. Actually, what I've been doing lately, it has been extension, taking what other people know, and giving the information to the people who need it. I know where you're coming from there. That's a good way to describe it. Robyn, like I said earlier, you and I met at the Tri-County meeting in Wooster, Ohio back in March, and you were talking about the spotted lanternfly.

Something I know almost nothing about, but where you come from on the more eastern part of the country than I am, it is causing significant problems as I understand it. Can you give us an overview of what it is, what it does, and why beekeepers need concern? Then we can go back and look at maybe some things that the farmers can do, beekeepers can do, and the problems that are being caused by this ugly little bug.

Robyn: The spotted lanternfly is a really big planthopper that arrived in Berks County, Pennsylvania in 2014 on what we understand was a load of rocks shipped from China. If you've ever seen the egg masses of spotted lanternfly, you can see why no one would have noticed them. They look like a bit of chewing gum or clay on a surface, on a rock or the trunk of a tree.

Jeff: Looks like lichen almost on a rock.

Robyn: That's funny you say that because when you tell people scrape the egg masses, sometimes they spend days scraping the lichens off their fence. [laughter]

Jeff: Serves as a dual purpose. Not only do you get rid of the bug, but you also clean up the property a little bit. [laughs]

Robyn: But the poor lichens didn't do anything wrong. [laughter] They hatched out. They come out of the egg as a little nymph that is black with white little dots. Then they molt a few times later on in the nymphal stage, they're red and black and white. Then in the fall, the beekeepers fall like August, they become adults where they're really beautiful. When they fly, they're not very good flyers, but when they open their wings, the underwings are bright red.

When they're full of eggs, the sides of their abdomen is yellow. They're just very colorful, very beautiful, and all throughout their life they are plant suckers. They have a big straw mouth. They poke it into plants and suck out the phloem. The phloem is the sugar water inside of a plant. It's bringing the sugars made by photosynthesis to other parts of the plant. They're just phloem feeders drinking sugar syrup.

Jeff: How big are they?

Robyn: An adult is an inch, so your pointer finger from your second knuckle to your nail. They're pretty big as adults. Very noticeable.

Jeff: That's what I was wondering. Would you notice it if you saw it crawling on the picnic table or something?

Robyn: You would notice it crawling on the sidewalk. Also, if you had a tree of interest later in the season, it wouldn't just be one, it would be the whole trunk covered with adults. That's the thing about them. When they're nymphs, they can feed on over 170 different plants. They're not very picky, but in the fall they really congregate. That's where they're very noticeable to homeowners. I have a red maple in my front yard, and I could fill a ziplock bag, a sandwich bag with these guys daily when we have a bad infestation. They're bothersome, mostly because if you imagine that your diet was sugar water, really your body doesn't need that much sugar water.

What it needs is all these trace minerals. Basically, they have to go to the bathroom all day long just like you would if you were drinking water. It's that honeydew excrement on everything below them that's a problem. Imagine you have this beautiful tree next to your deck, and it's covered with these bugs, and they're peeing everywhere. Your deck could be slick, and it also then grows mold.

Just like when you make one-to-one syrup for your bees, and you let it sit out for a week, and it gets moldy, this is doing that, but on every leaf, below your deck, your car, whatever, ends up growing this black sooty mold. The trunks of the tree year after year, you can tell which ones are popular with the lanternflies, even when they're not there because there's this sheen of black.

Jeff: It sounds like we just assumed like you keep them out east.

Robyn: If only I could, yes.

Jeff: I understand they're heading in our direction, not only the maple tree in your front yard, which is going to be bad enough for homeowners and city parks and city streets, and what have you. Are there agricultural crops that they particularly enjoy, or are there specific city trees, or homeowner trees that they like?

Robyn: The crop that they destroy the most is grapes. It's a major problem for wine industry. When they first came in and became abundant, the wineries around us would see their vines covered in lanternflies, spray, all of them would drop, next day, covered again. It was just like they couldn't even keep up with that. It's not that they're sucking on the fruits, but they're sucking the phloem out of the plants, and excrement on the grapes. Then the grapes grow mold, or they have a very poor crop because there's no sugar water in the plant to make nice, juicy, yummy grapes.

Jeff: Do they attack the grapes themselves?

Robyn: No.

Jeff: Just the vines.

Robyn: Just the vines, but the vine can be completely killed.

Kim: Any other crops that they particularly enjoy?

Robyn: Nothing else that causes a very big issue. Early on, they thought maybe stone fruit crops would be a problem, but I don't think it is. Another tree that they really love is tree-of-heaven, which is also something that came here from Asia, but it's been in the US for 200 years, and has spread all over the place, and is naturalized if that's the right word. If you have tree-of-heaven, I think that lanternfly can definitely come to you.

Kim: A mixed blessing then because a tree-of-heaven, Elaeagnus, we have a few of them in here in Medina. Making them go away wouldn't bother anybody here, I think so. [chuckles] If we could just focus the bugs on the right plants, where it probably wouldn't be a problem at all. One of the things you just mentioned was the excrement that they produce from sucking all of the sugar syrup. I understand that that causes several problems.

Robyn: They can kill a tree. A tree-of-heaven that's popular with the lanternflies fall after fall can be killed. Not that we care because it's not so a tree that you really want, but as you can imagine, the excrement is pretty popular with other insects that like sugar water, such as honey bees. I think that's where you were leading me to. [laughter]

Kim: Where does that happen? What stage in all of this going on in a growing season do honey bees and spotted lanternflies get together?

Robyn: I'm going to answer that by telling the history of my work with bees and lanternflies. I told you lanternflies arrived here in 2014. It was just in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Department of Ag was charged with trying to control them. The method they chose was to create what they called trap trees. They would go to a woodlot and kill almost all of the tree-of-heaven because at the time they thought that they had to have tree-of-heaven as part of their diet. They knew the adults would congregate there late in the season. They would cut down or kill most of them, leave a few, and then spray them with a systemic insecticide. That was dinotefuran.

A systemic pesticide is something that you get on one part of the plant, and then it goes into all the plant tissues. They would do a bark spray in May or June, and then when the lanternflies would come, they would just drop when they would drink the phloem. It was pretty gross. There would just be piles and piles of dead lanternflies under these trap trees. What they also noticed was that other insects were coming to these trees because the lanternfly excrement was all over, and also after they have put their mouthparts into the tree, it leaks some sap.

They contacted me because I worked with bees and I lived in Berks County, and I was working at Kutztown University at the time. The Department of Ag said, "Hey, if we give you a little bit of money, can you put out some sentinel honey bee colonies, and sample them, and see if this pesticide is getting into their honey?" I was like, "Yes, I'll do that." I set some colonies near places where there was just trap trees all over the place, and I sampled the honey, the wax, and the bees. At the same time, I had people do these 10-minute observations of the trunks of the trees where the lanternflies were.

You would go to the tree and for 10 minutes, every single insect that visited the tree you would write down. Now, these weren't trained entomologists, but they knew what a honey bee looked like. They would know a hornet, a fruit fly, an ant, that level butterfly kind of thing. They did these 10-minute observations, and I was mostly interested in whether honey bees were coming. We saw all kinds of different things. Ants, fruit flies were all over them. Butterflies would come, the European hornets would come, and sometimes they'd be eating the lanternflies, and other times they'd be licking the stuff.

From that study in 2017 at that location, there were hardly any honey bee observations. To me, they weren't acting like they were filling up and recruiting, or anything like that.

I also found zero pesticide in any of the honey. I actually published a paper and I truly believe, I'm like, "Honey bees are never going to go to this stuff. It ferments, it's gross, they don't go to fermented stuff. They like fresh sugar syrup." I published a paper, and I moved on. Then in 2019, I had already shifted over to Penn State.

One fall, calls were coming in from beekeepers saying, "Help us, we have this strange honey in our hives, and we don't know what it is. We don't know why it tastes so weird. Help us figure it out." Everybody then pointed to me and said, "Hey, let's look at this honey." I've been researching it ever since. I've done blind taste tests with experienced beekeepers to try to see if they can pinpoint some floral source for this taste of honey, nobody has ever tasted anything like this. I collected samples from beekeepers all across the state, but that almost 200 beekeepers to bring. It was lucky because it was the perfect timing. I was like, "All right, collect some fall honey and bring it to our state meeting, which is always at the beginning of November." We got these samples. I've been testing them for pesticides, and I do occasionally find small amounts of that dinotefuran, nothing of concern to bees or people, which is a really good thing. We also are trying to figure out more stuff about this honey, like why does it taste so weird? One thing that I am exploring is-- Tree-of-heaven, the genus is Ailanthus, and it is a really interesting tree. It actually has its own herbicide to kill off its competitors around it.

It's called ailanthone. Ailanthone has a very bitter taste. In fact, it's the reason lanternflies are so colorful because they sequester this, and then they taste bitter. There's the paper out about how birds spit them out. We're wondering if that's what's making the honey taste funny. So far, I see no correlation with the taste versus how much ailanthone is in there. That's disappointing. I was hoping that was the answer. The timing of the year, the locations that overlap with lanternflies, and we've now just done some more DNA testing on the honey. We're finding lanternfly DNA. Everything points to this strange honey being the result of lanternflies.

Kim: This is the excrement that bees are collecting off the trunks of these trees, or their host plants. It sounds like collecting propolis in a way, but also just plant sap not from flowers. They're collecting this, now they're bringing it back to the hive. Is it being treated in the hive like honey is? Do they take moisture out of it?

Robyn: They collect the excrement, which is not that sugary, take it back to the hive, treat it like honey, and it comes in very large quantities. That occurs when normally in Pennsylvania we're in a dearth. The bottom line for beekeepers is if you take your honey off after the honey flow is over, for us we always say by the 4th of July, the honey flow is over for the spring-summer flow, if you take your honey off, then it won't be contaminated by lanternfly stuff. The great thing is, they feed themselves for the winter. Literally, if there's a year where there's a lot of lanternflies, the beekeeper saves thousands of dollars on feed because they just feed themselves with this stuff.

Luckily they overwinter very well on it. That's a very important thing because-- Honey Do Honey is actually really popular and normal in Europe from aphids. It's not abnormal to eat honey made from other insect excrements. It's just weird for us in the US, but in Europe, it's my understanding that the ash content of this honey is so high that the beekeeper has to strip the colony of it, or they die from dysentery in the winter. Here they seem to do just fine. It actually ends up being a positive. I haven't found anything about the honey that makes it bad for the bees.

Jeff: Is there a difference in ash content between Europe and North America?

Robyn: I have sent some off for ash content analysis, but I don't really understand the results. They don't look like what I was expecting. I have to further investigate that because I had higher levels in non-lanternfly honey. It doesn't really make sense to me. I need more time to figure that one out.

Jeff: Let's give you a couple moments to work on that. We're going to take a quick break for a sponsor message. We'll be right back.

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Kim: As much as I would like to think, Robyn, that beekeepers are perfect and they'll never harvest any of this, they'll harvest their honey and let what comes in after that, leave it for the bees and then get rid of it maybe because of taste or something. That's the question. What does this stuff taste like? Would I want some?

Robyn: That's up to the person to eat.

Jeff: That's a long pause.

Robyn: Right. We each have different taste buds, and like and dislike different things. I've done many taste tests with audiences, and I feel like it's about 50-50 like it or don't like it. Kim, you tried it, what did you think?

Kim: I'm one of the 50 that didn't, I have to admit. Given a choice between spotted lanternfly honey and alfalfa honey, I'd pick alfalfa 99 out of 100 times. I can see where some people would pick this spotted lanternfly honey because it's like what's a dark strong honey like--

Jeff: Buckwheat.

Robyn: Buckwheat.

Kim: Like buckwheat kind of, but not that dark. It wasn't dark, the stuff that you gave me, it was a medium amber. Is what you showed me that you had at that meeting that day pretty much the color of it all of the time?

Robyn: It does appear much darker in a jar. It's definitely lighter than buckwheat. It's not black, it's quite brown, chocolate brown. Then here in the east, I don't know if you have this, the knotweed honey, Japanese knotweed, that's really, really red. That's very red. I feel like it's about the darkness of knotweed, but it's brown rather than red. Kim, I'm with you. I'm in the, "I don't like it" camp as well.

Kim: [laughs] Another quick question is when it comes into the hive when the bees have been out collecting it, and they're bringing it in, do you have a feel for the moisture content of it? Then after, do they dry it down? Then what do they dry it down to? What I'm looking at is potential fermentation here.

Robyn: No, they dry it down even more. It has less water than our typical honey. I feel like it was only 16%.

Kim: You could almost eat it with a fork.

Robyn: Yes. It crystallizes as well.

Jeff: Is it quick to crystallize? It's not like canola or anything.

Robyn: It's not like canola, no. It comes in in great quantities. I think beekeepers aren't going to want to leave that much space for the bees for the winter. I think you almost have to take some off. You're inevitably going to get some. I don't know about you, but I lick my fingers while I'm harvesting honey. [laughter] You definitely want to keep this stuff separate. You don't want to taint your other wonderful honey. You could tell, it looks dark. I would bet though if you were in a knotweed area that it would just blend in because knotweed has a strong flavor, but mixed with golden rod, it would overpower.

Kim: It doesn't sound like there's much that beekeepers can do. It's just if you've got host plants around your bee yard, you're going to get this kind of honey. You can selectively harvest, and probably get rid of most of the problem if you're really careful. That's got to be a pain in the extractor to have to do that, isn't it?

Robyn: Yes, a pain in the extractor. [laughter] You just have to know that it's going to happen, get your good honey off first. There is a market for it, some people like it. It can be sold to bakers. In fact, my favorite story is a friend of mine, Don Shump, he's with the Philadelphia Bee Company. He had the most brilliant marketing of this stuff when it first came out. He called it Doom Bloom, and has this crazy logo that's like a skull with a lanternfly.

He put it out on the market at Halloween, and it was a huge hit. He made a ton of money, and he still sells this stuff, Doom Bloom. Beekeepers, we're just creative people. Just have to have some creative marketing. I wouldn't sell it as wildflower honey or not tell my customers, but tell them what it is, and go ahead and sell it.

Kim: I'm thinking here really quick that if I go back to the beginning of beekeeping here, the definition of honey is nectar collected from flowers by bees. This definitely isn't nectar collected from flowers by bees. Can I even put honey on my label?

Robyn: You can because that definition is missing the part where that says, or from the sugary parts of plants, something like that. It's honey. I have a really good definition. You can call it honey because honey is the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants, or from secretions of living parts of plants, or excretions of plants sucking insects.

Jeff: There you go.

Robyn: There you go. It's actually honey.

Jeff: It's part C of that definition. [laughter]

Kim: If it's mixed with my alfalfa honey, I can call it honey without even having to explain, or just wildflower. I wouldn't call it wildflower, but, well okay, we've settled that. Jeff, I think probably what we should do is get that definition on the webpage so that people can defend [laughs] calling this substance at the end of the day honey. What do you think?

Jeff: I'm almost not liking this entire topic. [laughter] I'm stuck at the very beginning. Are the honey bees collecting the excrement from these beetles off the tree trunks, and/or are they milking, for lack of better term, the beetles themselves? Because if they're bringing in this much tainted honey, it would seem like we would see masses of bees on the tree trunks, or with the heads of the beetles in stocks.

Robyn: They're planthoppers. There are so many adults excreting so much phloem that they're like peeing on each other, and all the leaves below. You can look on YouTube for videos of the bees just all over all the surfaces just lapping it up. It's like in drops on the bugs themselves because you need an umbrella.

Jeff: How is it on car finishes? Does it destroy car finishes?

Kim: Oh, that is a thought.

Robyn: I haven't heard of it destroying car finishes. I do have a vehicle that I purchased that was kept under some trees, and the top is pretty blackish, and I can't get it off. It's my bee vehicle, so I decided I don't care.

Jeff: [laughter] Just adds color literally.

Kim: Do you have a measure of the pH, the acidity of this stuff? Does it close to honey, or way far away, or? That's just as a quick question, but--

Robyn: I don't think I have that measurement. I should get that measurement, thank you. The other thing that I want to get, and I still haven't because I am just not a chemist, I am a honey bee management person, I want to be out in the bee yard. I haven't found someone to do the sugar content for me. I want a breakdown of the sugars. That is to come as well. The other cool thing, one beekeeper in Philadelphia sent his lanternfly honeydew honey to Poland to a lab where they do the manuka value testing.

He put the report online, and it says that it's more medicinal, more antimicrobial than manuka honey. I just sent some samples off myself, and I'm awaiting those results. That would be very exciting if we have our own medicinal manuka value, lanternfly value maybe.

Kim: Then you wouldn't care what it tasted like.

Jeff: No, because this--

Robyn: Because this medicine.

Kim: It's being beneficial in other areas. Interesting concept.

Jeff: We could slap it on a band-aid and put it on your ulcer literally. I just--

Robyn: Exactly. [laughs]

Jeff: I did a report once on the medicinal value of manuka honey, and that's really exciting actually. That's really making lemonade out of lemons in a way if it really is true.

Robyn: I don't mean to just change the subject, but there's another way that lanternflies affect bees.

Jeff: Please do. [laughs]

Robyn: That is that beekeepers have to be really careful not to spread lanternflies around. When lanternflies lay their eggs, it could be on the pallet that you have your bees on. If you're going to move bees from one place to another, it's really important to know how to recognize those egg masses, and not take them to your new bee yard, or a new state, or something like that.

Jeff: Wow.

Kim: I'll bet you have some photos of those, am I right?

Robyn: Yes.

Kim: We can share those with people so they know what they're looking at this later summer, or early fall when they're moving them. I know there's lots of photos of the insect itself all over the web. You can see what the nymphs look like, and what the adults look like, and now what the egg masses look like.

Jeff: That really poses a really interesting subject. They're introduced in, I think Southeast Pennsylvania, you said they're marching west, I believe you said?

Robyn: North and south.

Jeff: North and south. The following, I assume the interstates essentially probably, or no, are they just following the blue?

Robyn: Yes, and the rail lines are pretty bad because a lot of them are just lined with tree-of-heaven. The first thing that we saw, other than it traveling just outward from the center, is straight across the Pittsburgh on the rails. The best place to look to see where are lanternflies now is actually the New York State extension website, or is it--?

Jeff: I tell you what, we'll look it up, and we'll have it in the show notes.

Robyn: They keep the map current. Every time there's a new spotting or establishment, they add it to the map. You can see it's as far south as West Virginia. They've found it already in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and quite far up into New England. It has not been contained. There's public relations advertisements, if you see them, kill them, whatever. I don't really think it's going to make a difference to be honest. The cat's out of the bag.

Jeff: Are they deterred by weather at all? Is there northern limit, the southern limit, humidity?

Robyn: We had a really cold winter last year, and they came through just fine. I'm sure there's some limit, but I don't know what it is.

Jeff: Beekeepers should be on the lookout for spotted lanternfly at all three stages, and the egg sacs, not only because it's just an invasive species, and a crop damage that it could potentially cause, but also damage to the honey crop that could happen if you get the mix into your prize orange blossom or your prize wildflower, or clover. It sounds like it's not something that would mix well, but the upside is it might be better than manuka honey. There's a $10 bottle increase even for what a six-ounce bottle of manuka honey is outrageously ridiculous, but expensive.

Robyn: The other positive, it's great overwintering food.

Jeff: For the bees.

Kim: We've got a fairly robust grape industry up here in Northeast Ohio. I'm guessing that they're watching this pretty close. The direction that you're giving is, it looks like they've got Medina right in their crosshairs. I think I'll probably have to go look tomorrow to see if I've got them here yet, which I'm hoping I don't. What have we missed about this, Robyn?

Robyn: I'd love to hear what people think of the honey when they get their tongues on it.

Jeff: There you go listeners. If you've had experiences of spotted lanternfly honey, let us know. Let us know in the comments. We'd love to hear from you and find out, "Hey, is this a valuable product? Is this something you could sell, or not"?

Kim: I got to wonder, Jeff, is this going to be a new classification in honey shows? You got light amber, dark amber, all of this, and then spotted lanternfly way over in the end. [laughter] We'll have to get Marina back and have her taste some of this to see what she thinks of it.

Robyn: She did actually taste it, and provided us with her thoughts. She described it as tasting like wet autumn leaves. Did that [crosstalk]

Kim: There's a vision for you. [laughter] All good, I'm glad you did that. That also adds to some of the descriptive value of what we can give to this stuff.

Jeff: He stated that, my thought instantly went back to my bigger brothers hold me on the ground, shoving leaves in my mouth. It's amazing [chuckles] what taste memories can well up in your brain. [laughs]

Kim: There you go.

Jeff: That was a fun scouting trip. It's been a delight having you on the show. Actually, I did not know of the spotted lanternfly problem until we invited you to the show. I did a little bit of-- It'd be hard to tell, but I did a little bit of research prior to you coming on, and how big of a problem is potentially can be. I'm actually concerned and appreciate the fact that you're there researching it, and getting us information on what it's doing to our industry.

Kim: Jeff, we'd be more than happy to share once we get them here. [laughs]

Jeff: Thanks so much, Robyn, for being here. We look forward to an update maybe in a year's time. You can let us know what new things you've found.

[music]

Robyn: Great. Thank you so much for having me on.

Kim: It was good catching up with you again, Robyn. Nice to see you. Thank you for all of this.

Jeff: Kim, I'm happy for you to keep that spotted lanternfly there in Ohio. Just do whatever you can, don't let it go west.

Kim: Like I said, I met Robyn at Tri-County Fair in Wooster, Ohio a little bit earlier this spring. I was immediately interested in what she was talking about because I didn't know a lot about it. I'd heard it, done quite a bit of research since then, and it was good to get her on here to share what she knows, and what people now in Ohio and Illinois and Indiana, and wherever can expect, especially the grape growers in Northeast Ohio. It sounds like they're going to have to be paying attention to this.

Jeff: There's a lot of concerns there, both from a beekeeper standpoint, and the grower standpoint. This increases the use of insecticides in times and places we don't want it. There's a lot of issues here that I wish I was still ignorantly unaware of. [laughter]

[music]

Kim: Sometimes, that's not a bad thing to be, but in this one, it's said, the more you know, the better off you'll be.

Jeff: [chuckles] That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to rate us five stars on Apple Podcast, wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review, and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you'd like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Betterbee for their longtime support of this podcast. Thanks to Blue Sky Bee Supply 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 at leave a comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:41:03] [END OF AUDIO]