Erika Thompson — Professional beekeeper and founder of Texas Beeworks in Austin, known for viral bee-removal videos that drew tens of millions of views.
The gist
In what she says is her first-ever podcast, beekeeper Erika Thompson walks Joe Rogan through the inner world of a honeybee colony: the roles of queens, workers, and drones, how bees communicate through pheromones and the waggle dance, and how she performs live bee removals barehanded. She explains the science and craft of beekeeping, the threats bees face from industrial agriculture, pesticides, and habitat loss, and debunks popular myths like local honey curing allergies. The conversation ranges widely into hornets, parasitic wasps, cordyceps fungus, coyotes, and dogs. Thompson repeatedly emphasizes putting the health of the hive before harvesting honey and urges listeners to buy from local beekeepers.
Big reveals
- Male drone bees die immediately after mating because their endophallus rips out of their abdomen.
- In winter, female worker bees kick all the male bees out of the hive to starve or freeze, conserving resources.
- When a new queen emerges while the old queen still lives, the queens fight to the death and the best queen wins.
- Thompson's bee-removal video got 24 million views in 24 hours, and a later one hit 50 million in 24 hours, changing her life.
- The widespread belief that local honey protects against seasonal allergies is, she says, completely false with no scientific evidence.
- So-called killer bees are a hybrid created when a biologist brought an African bee subspecies to Brazil in the 1950s to breed a better bee.
- Honeybees are not native to North America; they were brought over by colonists, and other native bees and pollinators existed before them.
- Honey is the world's third most faked food, frequently cut with corn syrup, and banned Chinese honey is rerouted through other countries.
Things worth remembering
- Bees have existed for about 120 million years, while humans have only kept them for roughly ten thousand.
- A female worker bee lives about six weeks in spring and summer but up to six months in winter, developing fat bodies to survive.
- Bees can taste the difference between sweet and salty through their feet.
- A queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day and is the only bee that defecates inside the hive.
- Bee pollen is a strong protein source, with more protein per pound than beef or chicken.
- Bees navigate using the Earth's magnetic field via magnetite particles and communicate forage locations through the waggle dance relative to the sun.
- Honeybees defend against giant hornets by swarming and beating their wings to overheat the hornet to death.
- The varroa mite, the biggest threat to bees, was only discovered in 2018 (by Dr. Sammy Ramsey) to feed on bees' fat bodies, not their blood.
- Cordyceps mushrooms are farmed on caterpillars and improve oxygen utilization, basis for the supplement Shroom Tech.
- Killing coyotes backfired: persecution made them spread into every city in North America, including the Bronx and Central Park.
Recommended in this episode
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Coyote America
Dan Flores
“there's a great book called coyote America by Dan Flores and he details how coyotes because of the persecution with gray wolves” — Joe Rogan 02:03:14Find it on Amazon
Shroom Tech
Onnit
“shroom Tech is um a supplement that's based on the cordyceps mushroom that the Chinese Olympic team started using in track and field events” — Joe Rogan 01:55:25Find it on Amazon
Grizzly Man
Werner Herzog (inferred)
“have you ever seen the documentary Grizzly Man yes amazing yes right well here's that noise I make” — Erika Thompson 02:01:41Find it on Amazon