Julie Hilsen

Host

00:00

Life of Love. Life of Love Life of Love. Life of Love with Julie Hilsen  Music Music. Hello, dear friends, and welcome to another episode of Life of Love. Very honored and excited to have this guest with me today. His name is Henry Sveck And we can call him Hank right.

Hank Svec

Guest

00:31

You can call me a lot of things, but Hank works great. Hank works great.

Julie Hilsen

Host

00:36

Oh my goodness. Well, Hank, he’s had many lifetimes experience here.

Hank Svec

Guest

00:41

I mean I’m old. as I was just saying, He’s an old guy.

Julie Hilsen

Host

00:46

Most people quit their day job and retire, but I just can’t wait to just share what you’ve been through. In 40 years you’ve been investing in real estate and value investing. You also have been a 30 year clinical psychologist And that’s you know. That’s a lifetime in itself. And now you’ve taken your family farm and you’re you’re dedicating it to the nature and restoration of honeybees A sanctuary. It’s just so exciting And I just really liked reading your book. Thanks for sharing that with me, and you know I just I’m just so excited. Oh, and also I don’t want to forget to mention that you also have a podcast called invest like a honeybee.

Hank Svec

Guest

01:28

Another crazy idea I had on the treadmill.

Julie Hilsen

Host

01:32

Yeah, so, hank, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Hank Svec

Guest

01:36

Thanks for having me, Julie. I’m excited to be here.

Julie Hilsen

Host

01:39

Well, i just want to get right into it, because you said yourself that you’ve had three worlds collide and just bringing together this new phase in your life, with you and Mary taking over the family farm. It was in your family throughout your childhood, right? It was a orchard, a commercial orchard, i believe you said.

Hank Svec

Guest

01:57

About 60 years ago my parents purchased this farm. Before that it had been a farm for probably a hundred years, so it had been farm. It’s. We’re kind of in a little pocket of some of the best land in Canada. So on our farm that thousands of years ago would have been a lake, in a marsh You can grow celery, vegetables, fruit trees, like. It’s quite an incredible ecosystem that existed here years ago And it’s been farmed intensively, like just just farmed for trees, you know, fruit trees, a lot of sprays and pesticides and all of that. And then about I think it’s about five years ago, we started transition back over to nature.

Julie Hilsen

Host

02:35

So did you. You grew up with the honeybees, were there helping the orchard? Is that your first exposure?

Fascinating Life of Bees

Hank Svec

Guest

02:41

Well, I was scared to death to bees. For a long time I had them and I was a little kid and I used to watch them do his thing And I he’d go out there in shorts and t-shirts and gets he’d love to get stung. In fact, as he aged he had arthritis in his knees. He would, he would take a little worker and they would sting him in his knee and he would be good for the day. He’d say So he had some really interesting and I watched all of that and I really didn’t get into the bees. I love the honey and I’d help and take off the honey. but I was around it but I was never really involved Cause back then there wasn’t. He raised bees kind of like I’m doing it now, where you’re kind of hands off, you let nature do most of its work. So there wasn’t a lot of intensive interaction but I was around bees from an early and we did have them come into, as you say, pollinate our trees. That’s why we had them down on our farm.

Julie Hilsen

Host

03:26

Nice And I imagine in your area of the world it’s cold for several extended months and very, very frozen conditions. I mean, i imagine it’s a special climate for bees to survive there.

Hank Svec

Guest

03:43

Well, because here you remember, I don’t know if you know what happens, but when bees get into the fall here a new bee is hatched which is called a winter bee. So the regular bees live six weeks, the winter bees live up to six months and they have a special way to process food so that they can survive. Like and it’s an evolution right The bees evolve where it’s cold. And the other thing is, you know, bees very quickly have what’s called neuro-regenesis, so whatever experience they have, it becomes part of their neurology that they pass on to the next generation through different means maybe we can talk about. So they’re very quick to adjust to changes.

04:21

And it’s quite fascinating when you think about the winter bees, like we sometimes are minus 20, minus 30. We have a strain of bees here from Saskatchewan which is, i think, the coldest place and it goes minus 40, minus 50 sometimes And these bees survive outside and we have some of those genetic strains here now too. So we’re trying to let them sort of live in our world and see what’s the best way for them to adjust to what’s happening. And all around us everybody intensively farms, so our bees are exposed to all kinds of things that we’re trying to work with and figure that out too.

Julie Hilsen

Host

04:57

Wow. So to me, if they can pass knowledge on, if they can pass intelligence, to me that sounds like consciousness. What do you think?

Hank Svec

Guest

05:06

It’s crazy, like we just, and in fact, when I asked regular beekeepers and it’s kind of funny to call someone a beekeeper because you can’t keep bees because they fly, right, julie, you can’t put a leash on them and put them in a fence, they go and do whatever they want. So I said to this beekeeper once who got kind of angry with me, i said well, if the worker bees are doing their thing and they learn a new thing to help them survive, let’s say it’s how to take out a sick larvae that aren’t going to survive And that becomes a behavior Very quickly that becomes part of their neurology. How does that worker bee pass it on to the next generation if they’re not laying eggs and they’re not responsible for creating the next generation? Well, here’s what happens. There’s two ways. The first way and we just learned it’s science that doesn’t sometimes get to the ground of working with bees, worker bees. When a queen passes away or when they think they’re going to swarm, the workers create a new queen by feeding a few selected babies royal jelly. The royal jelly is a food the workers create by taking in some food and using enzymes and then feeding the larvae that then become queens They’ve discovered through genetics and all this crazy science that the bees actually in their food, when the worker bees are making, create royal jelly. They pass the mRNA and the signals to the next generation of what they learned in their lifetime In the food. For gosh sakes, right And so then? so you got to let your bee swarm, and traditionally it’s not good to let your bee swarm in conventional beekeeping because it cuts down your honey production. But if bees swarm, that’s what they do.

06:46

The second thing that happens, which is really crazy. So if in a beehive the queen doesn’t make it and the bees can’t create another queen, sometimes the workers, a worker or two, starts laying eggs, but the eggs are only males, but the male eggs have a exact replication of the DNA and everything from that worker bee that’s laying the egg. So let’s say, a worker be lays 5000 eggs and 5000 drones because eventually, in 30 days, that hive will no longer survive because there’s no queen, but those 5000 drones fly off and that genetics of that hive are now transferred to all the other places those drones go. So there’s that mechanism in place in nature to sort of throw all these opportunities and possibilities and whoever survives is going to survive due to the changes in the environment. When we stop that from happening, what happens is we stop letting nature take care of itself.

07:43

The craziest statistic when we stop farming, the first year we just let everything rest. He had grown corn on it before, regular corn for animals The first year, without planting anything. We had over 90 different species of wildflowers, but we didn’t plan any of them. So for 150 years the place is getting bombarded with sprays and pesticides and all kinds of things. Just one year leaving it alone. They came back and so did some of the insects and dragonflies and bumblebee. So just by leaving nature alone for one year, we did not do anything. We started to correct the place. It was kind of cool.

Julie Hilsen

Host

08:17

That is really cool And it gives me so much hope.

Hank Svec

Guest

08:21

Exactly, exactly.

Julie Hilsen

Host

08:23

So much hope And, oh gosh, there’s so many different ways we could go with this. I wanted to talk about the drones because that’s just fascinating And you mentioned them and how they take the genetics of the queen who didn’t make it, and they go out. But can you just share with the audience the magic of the drones and what their role is, because it’s just absolutely fantastic.

Hank Svec

Guest

08:51

It’s hard to believe that. I always wonder as you read the book how do you get this coordination to go on? How do you? we can’t get five people in a room to talk. There’s 40,000 different bees hanging around, so the drones are. We can say, males and females on the show. I hope.

Julie Hilsen

Host

09:08

Oh, sure, yes.

Hank Svec

Guest

09:10

The females do everything important And the males are said to not do a lot. So here, a drone bee is a male bee, and the male bees technically are probably twice the size of a worker bee And it’s thought by traditional beekeeping. They don’t do anything but go visit. They have a place where they go try to hook up with queens. But other than that the thought is well, that’s not true, because now we know that drone bees do three things. They’re the heating and cooling systems of the hives here in Canada from probably May till November, october. Yes, they do go visit queens to reproduce and pass on the genetics. But the third thing that no one can identify is they add a sort of a karma to the hive. It’s called, and even traditional beekeepers start talking about it. They add to the atmosphere and the vibe. It’s called sometimes, but traditional beekeepers are taught to destroy drone cells because drones eat too much honey.

10:12

But my philosophy is, if bees create drones, they’re doing it for a reason. The queen can lay eggs that become drones on purpose or, like we talked about, worker bees, but the queen will start laying drones when she feels like she wants to, for whatever reason, and I say who cares, let her do all the drones. But the drones add to the balance of the hive. Now in October in Canada here and other cold climates in America you can watch when the bees drag out the drones. So they banish them from the hive because the bees no longer need the heating cooling for this time of the year and the drones consume too much food. So the worker bees basically destroy them And then in May or April depending on where you live, they appear again because the eggs are laid in the drone.

11:01

Now here’s the thing that I don’t understand. So a drone bee is coming out now, may, and let’s say they’re going to go to what’s called the congregation area, the drone congregation area. It’s a place about a hundred feet up in the sky where they meet with the queens to mate, but the drone has never been there. So how does the drone know where to go? How does it know that in this hundred foot by hundred foot space it could be a mile or two away from where they’re living, that they know to go, and how does the queen know that that’s where she’s supposed to go to meet the drones? And then, if they do hook up with the queen, the queen kills them. That’s sort of the game they play And so if you’re watching I watch a lot of like, i watch lots of hours of bees In the late spring you can watch the drones come back from their flights because they fuel up again and then they go up and they fly up and they try to hook up with the queen And when they’re unsuccessful they come back, and when they’re successful they don’t come back, but they passed on their genetics.

12:02

So the drones are a very vital part of a hive, even though they’ve been sort of shunned in traditional beekeeping. I think they’re the balance of a hive. They provide some service And remember they’re lazy, they lay around all day, they have to be fed, they don’t even go out to go to the bathroom. The poor bees have to take care of all that the workers But they do. They tolerate it because obviously the value the thing about bees, it’s just cool The value of what they’re doing has to surpass the cost. So keeping the drones makes sense to them until we get into October, november and Canada, when the cost is higher than the value, and then they get rid of them.

Julie Hilsen

Host

12:39

I just thought of something. They go to the congregation. They all leave in a posse right And it just gives a new slant on the term wingman.

Hank Svec

Guest

12:51

That’s a great. I’m glad you opened that up because I don’t understand that whole process, right? I mean they are fighting to get to the queen to be killed, To be killed Like dumb guys at a bar, right? Sorry, I shouldn’t say that, But you know what I’m saying?

Julie Hilsen

Host

13:05

It’s just like a pack of guys on the prowl and then the queen has their number.

Hank Svec

Guest

13:13

Dumb stuff And the strongest, Yeah, And the strongest right. I mean now, today. I don’t know much about what’s going on socially and as far as what’s valued in masculine or if you can even say masculine feminine anymore, But the queen obviously values strength and power because they fight each other to get to her. Now, drones can’t sting, They don’t have any weapons, So the only way is through brute force. You know, I’m faster, smarter, I guess, quicker evasive. I have no one’s ever studied that, but I just can’t. I don’t understand how they find the spot Like how does a bee know? How does a drone know? Never been there.

Julie Hilsen

Host

13:51

Right, And then how did they even see where they went? I mean, I have a hard time visually, like the researchers. how did they put little trackers on the drones?

Hank Svec

Guest

14:02

Like how did they?

Julie Hilsen

Host

14:03

research that That’s intriguing to me as well.

Hank Svec

Guest

14:06

Well, apparently they do study these Sealy is the researcher, i don’t know if you’ve read or Sealy stuff but they actually these drone congregation areas remain year over year. So it’s kind of like a parking lot by a freeway. It’s going to be there again next year but we don’t know, like why it’s like above here versus above over there, like is it temperature, is it breeze, is it distance? We have no idea. But generally it’s the same area. So because it’s 100 feet up with, i guess, binoculars, people start walking around places and looking up and finding, because you can just see little specks flying around. But there can be like 10,000 drones in an area.

Julie Hilsen

Host

14:48

And then what if they put a big building there? What do they do See?

Hank Svec

Guest

14:52

that’s yeah. If someone’s out spraying, sometimes here, because we have orchards in the middle of the day, someone will start spraying a fungicide. Well, if that smell, bees are very sensitive with their, with the pheromones, and we call it smell. But it’s a different kind of thing, but it’s. It’s like our smell. And if, all of a sudden and I can smell it if someone is spraying two kilometers away because I used to spray that stuff growing up here on the farm, i know what they’re spraying And if a bee goes to that flower afterwards, they’re not going to be accepted back into any hive because they’re going to smell really funny and they won’t be allowed in by the guards and they’ll probably die. So there’s, there’s some real dumb things we do that stop them from doing what they have to do.

Julie Hilsen

Host

15:33

I know nature can teach us so much And if we just observe, we can say Hey, if the bees aren’t accepting this, should we like see the signs right?

Hank Svec

Guest

15:44

And the bumblebees too. Right, like I look at some of the like. I started when I got into beekeeping five or six years ago. I started like everybody else I picked in and great people and they believe in certain things, and one of the things they believe in is every two weeks you should open your hive and see that they’re healthy, and I started thinking about that. So if I’m sitting around the kitchen table, all of a sudden my roof is taken off my house and some arm comes down and starts moving the furniture around, checks my fridge, you know and then puts the roof back on And then anytime in the next two weeks that happens again, I’m going to be a little stressed.

16:16

Right, i’m going to be stressed, and we know that stress, just like humans, kills bees. When bees are under stress, they either leave or they die usually. But we have all these procedures in place, as kind of we did with farming like livestock and that kind of thing. But that’s really I don’t think it fits with bees. I really don’t, because you can’t keep them like livestock One thing they do. Sorry if you had a question about other time.

Julie Hilsen

Host

16:42

No, i just wanted to ask you that. That’s a segue. I wanted to ask you about being designated a servant beekeeper, because I noticed that you and Mary are both servant beekeepers and I’m new to this arena. Is that different from someone who tries to clip the queen’s wings and remove the drones and micromanage? Is that more of a commercial like when they do that? it’s more commercial beekeeping keeping. I say quotes because you can’t keep them, you just support them, right? You’re just creating the likelihood that they want to stay in that store.

Hank Svec

Guest

17:19

I call them livestock and beekeepers, and they’re fine. Without them, you wouldn’t have a lot of honey. Servant beekeeper we just made up, by the way, the name, because it’s about watching and listening to bees and not interfering more than you need to. So, in other words, we’re always walking that line. I’ll give you a quick example.

Beekeeping, Aggressive Hives, ad Ecosystem Restoration

17:36

So I was out about two weeks ago and I have some what are called five frame nukes. They’re just very small and they’ve all survived the winter, but there’s very little room inside and I know they’re running out of honey, and I said to myself it would be really easy to go and get some frames of honey that I keep every year for them, in case I do a split or something and just give them a little boost. So I’m just killing my, i just go. I can’t do that, though, because I’m circumventing nature, because they should have learned. If I do that, i’m going to help a species or a strain continue that it’s going to fail next year and they may pass it on and they’ll all fail. So the hardest thing about being a servant beekeeper is knowing when to leave them alone, when not to interfere, and serving them, so in other words, listening to what they tell you.

18:25

You know, and like I had a hive, very aggressive hive it would go after me. If I walked within 100 feet of that hive, it would attack me, they would come out and sting me. So I had two choices. Traditionally in beekeeping, you would euthanize that hive, you would take soapy water and you’d kill them all. And I thought, nah, i just nah. Plus, a lot of research shows that aggressive bees survive better than combies with mites and other things, because obviously they’re more aggressive. So I thought, okay, so what I’ll do is I’ll take them to the back of the forest where there’s no human existence for quite some time. So I get up in the morning, i do my whole thing and I’ve got a wet towel to cover the front for the time it takes me to get them down there with the tractor, because we’re talking about 1500 feet, i’ve got to drive a bit.

19:12

Well, as soon as I get going, the towel slips down and they all start coming out And I’m fully garbed up and they’re trying to sting me, so I take them all the way out there, right, and I put them out there and working with a little guy and his dad who come here, they sponsor a farm, so they get to come out, and I got bee suits for them And I said to the little guy I said, okay, so here’s a really aggressive hive, what should we do? And the little boy says, well, i think we should put a box on it so we can get some honey. And I said the pre-aggressive, do you think that’s good? So we said, okay, you’re in charge. so we did that And do you know what? within a week this aggressive hive fills an entire box full of honey for us. And then we took the honey and put another box in. another week they had another box for themselves and this was only July. So they had it for, i mean, and I just went and checked them and they’re okay and they didn’t attack me.

20:04

So I don’t know what happened. if they mellowed out, the queen’s changed, no idea. But they were nasty, they were aggressive. But I think we have to have a little bit of that. So that’s why when people say I’m going to put a bee on a roof of an office building, now that hurts me Because I say where’s the bee? where are they going to go eat? Where are they going to get water that’s clean? I don’t know if we should be doing that Or killing them. I think we need to put them in places like I did, like you need to have a sanctuary so that people aren’t too upset that they’re aggressive. put them someplace where they’re not going to hurt anyone. And there’s this big thing, especially from America, about Africanized bees in your warm climates where people are concerned that they get really too aggressive. But it’s nature. I think you’ve got to give them a chance.

Julie Hilsen

Host

20:53

Well, i mean, it’s my understanding that honey bees weren’t even indigenous to North America, that they were brought in.

Hank Svec

Guest

21:00

Absolutely right, you’re up parts of other parts of the world and they were brought in. So yeah, it’s. And there is some controversy about even what we do. People say, well, you should do what you do, but don’t bring in bees, leave it for the bumblebees. Well, we have bumblebees, we have natural bees. No, they do fight. They’re very aggressive, they go after each other, especially hornets, and we video all summer, so we have some pretty incredible videos about how they go after different things, but it’s part of nature. We just want to get a balance And we actually I didn’t tell you, but we actually just last week got some more land out. In Nova Scotia We’re going to do an ecosystem restoration on 95 acres. It was clear cut, we just picked that up. So I’m excited to try this project out there too.

Julie Hilsen

Host

21:41

Right, i was reading about that. I don’t know. I listened to your YouTube video about that before we met and I was going to ask you.

Hank Svec

Guest

21:48

That was my I’m sorry, you can ask me where I’m from. I’m kind of bit all over the place.

Julie Hilsen

Host

21:52

No, no, that’s okay. I mean, it’s just, that is So. You took. How many acres is it in Nova Scotia?

Hank Svec

Guest

21:59

Well, here it’s 50. Oh, in Nova Scotia that parcel is 95 acres.

Julie Hilsen

Host

22:04

And it was timberland that was clear cut Yeah 15 years ago they cut every tree.

Hank Svec

Guest

Conservation Efforts and Connection With Nature

22:10

They left a few at the back and it’s about 300 feet above the ocean. The ocean’s across the street, basically, and there’s a fishing wharf and a park and everything. But you go up from the road up and it’s all been clear cut. So our plan is to go in and plant clover first and different wildflowers, and some trees are already coming back on their own. So a big part of what we do is you leave it alone, like if there had been a fire or something 500 years ago, it would have started to grow. So we’re going to try to figure that out, probably plant more wildflower grasses and things, and what I want to do is put empty bee boxes to have swarms come that live there and not bring in any new bees, because I’m quite sure there are bees living somewhere out there in the forest that would appreciate coming in And it’d be fun to see if we can do it, and it’s part of some environmental stop projects I’m thinking about as well. So it’s kind of cool Looking forward to it.

Julie Hilsen

Host

23:02

It’s congratulations, i mean, here you’ve expanded, you’ve taken your model and you’re like, ok, let’s take it out here, and it seems like there might be some chance for ecotourism, which I think is it’s just so dearly needed, like when you go on vacation and you have people looking for a family-friendly thing to do, and if you can invite someone to say, hey, check this out, and hopefully you don’t get too many aggressive bees.

Hank Svec

Guest

23:33

Well, here’s the thing. You could negatively talk about clear cutting, but it happened, so let’s not worry about it and complain about it. Let’s just take the land and say OK, because thousands of, not thousands, hundreds of years ago it was farmed this land, and then trees for some reason. So yeah, i think you just take what you have. But everybody can do something. I mean, we’re just doing these things, i’m just doing these things for fun, but if you have a small part of your front lawn or back lawn, or if you can plant some clover, or if you can, go.

24:01

The first thing, i think, is to go out, as you said, and just sit in nature and learn just what it’s like to be in a really great place and then spend some time with bees. There’s a program where actually people with PTSD they have these buildings where you can go in and sleep above two hives, because the sound of the hives and the smell of the hives, the bees can’t get you because the entrance goes out, but you actually sleep on top of a beehive and the treatment effects no one can understand are quite incredible. They do something like when I watch my bees. as a psychologist I taught I’ve done hypnosis and all that kind of stuff. but this is a different kind of connection and I can’t explain it. I don’t know what it is. You get connected to not only the bees, but it’s almost like they.

24:51

I know this sounds a little freakish, but they send you some messages about what’s happening in their world And I was out the other day and they were flying and I was I’m about two feet from the entrance and a couple of them came over and just sat on my arm and they’re like looking at me It’s like a little baby looking at me like who’s this freak And they were around for a little while and then they just flew off and they were doing their thing and then you feel connected to them And I think the more we as humans get connected to things like that, the more we’re going to do to try to help them and we think twice about some of the behaviors that we do. Like I’m still amazed, when I walk on a road, even in Nova Scotia, the amount of garbage people throw out of their cars. I’m like why do you throw garbage out of your car? Come on, like that’s dumb.

25:36

These are dumb things too, by the way, we talked about.

Julie Hilsen

Host

25:38

Yeah, you did write about that in your book And I do. I just think that they’re spiritual on some level.

Hank Svec

Guest

25:47

Yeah, and the bumblebees are too. I don’t know if you ever sat and watched. Bumblebees or dragonflies are just killer. Apparently, dragonflies get 95% of their prey because of the way they fly, so if they’re going after I don’t know some other flying insect or hornet, or even they will, like you, see them move. They have incredible ability to. I think it’s the highest hit rate of any animal insect on the planet is a dragonfly, so we have them all over the place, because of course, wasps are attracted to the pollen and the nectar and the bees as well, and so they’re out there and then grasshoppers is quite, quite, quite.

Julie Hilsen

Host

26:23

If you want to connect to divinity, just, and you get a chance to just stare at a dragonfly and look at the patterns on their body, they, they’re like a. It’s like a sonic spaceship design. You can see it. You can see it. How amazing they are.

Hank Svec

Guest

26:44

Yeah, it’s unbelievable.

Julie Hilsen

Host

26:46

I save them from my pool every once in a while one lands on my pool and they, you know I have a saltwater pool, but it’s still. it generates chlorine. It’s not healthy for them And I’ll I’ll be like, ooh, can I save them? And I’ll lift them up and I, you know it’s just a mystical experience to just sit and stare at a live dragonfly. if they’ll let you.

Hank Svec

Guest

Fascinating Bees and Trust

27:06

My biggest challenge when I go out is to is to slow down my brain and really get into that gear. now, because I’ve been doing it for five, you can actually shift gears so that you’re opening up your awareness to everything. you see, smell here, and when you get close to a hive, you start smelling and hearing and you stop and you listen and watch and you just try to. I don’t know this sounds weird, but you try to connect to them, you try to understand. you know, like when they lose, two things happen.

27:34

when a hive loses a queen, for example, they get very loud and aggressive because they have to protect and they have to get to work, or they almost appear to get depressed. They don’t do anything. When you open a hive like that, they don’t even care, they don’t even fly up. sometimes They just walk around aimlessly like they’re really depressed. Other hives, when they lose a queen and you open them up, they’re nasty, like they are not happy to protect your mold because they’re going to get on with business. And so you ask yourself well, how does a beehive collective of 40,000 bees decide to? how does it go one way Like is it a personality trait? Is it a spiritual like what is, i don’t know, but it’s a fascinating thing to watch.

Julie Hilsen

Host

28:19

And it’s all perfect in design and, like you said, you let them work through it and you trust. And that was a major, a major message that I got from your book was, you know, trusting. And when you’re, when you’re investing in a company, don’t just invest because they’re environmental, invest because they have a sound business plan, plus, they care about the environment. Like we need a balance. We can’t have this diversity. We can’t have, we can’t have a pasteurized view about feminine and masculine. We have to have strong feminine and masculine.

28:56

These are all important things for for our world, right, and just the fact that we’re scared to say masculine or feminine, because there’s there’s judgment placed. It’s like, well, we’ve got to. We’ve got to see that everything is important And if you know, some people go back and forth, and that’s okay too. Like you have to appreciate everything about your soul and and you know it goes along with with bees and nature, like everything, the aggressive ones are there for a reason Their genetics are going to sustain and make it stronger And you know, so it’s it’s really cool to talk about in the, in the framework of bees.

Hank Svec

Guest

29:35

So we have a website, wildflowerbeefarmcom, where we have a lot of free services. So one day I was doing a classroom live at the hive. So I was at a hive. I was at a bee hive, all geared up, and there was a classroom in a far away city that was watching me And I I all because I had an experience in education.

29:53

As a psychologist, i spent a lot of classrooms. I used to say how’s it going, boys and girls? Or how are you guys doing? They’re usually boys and girls. And then I was told don’t say that this time, because we have people in grade five who are transitioning. And I I, as a clinical psychologist, i have an opinion of that, which is that most kids are dumb until they’re 18 or 22. No disrespect, i was a kid too, but your brain’s not developed and you can’t make decisions about what food to eat, let alone what sex. I’m going to be the rest of my life And that’s a fact. And I’ve worked with people who have had all kinds of transition issues and so on. And it’s respect, it’s protection, so that they’re safe and let let them just like we talked about nature let them take time to decide, because there’s a small part of our population that have to have an issue that they need to work on or they’re born to, whatever we’re going to talk about. So let’s be accepting of everyone, but let’s realize that we do have boys and girls, and that’s what. When I got into the bees, what’s really exciting is no one’s going to argue with me that there are drones, workers and queens, and so when I open those doors and go out into the farm, everything’s sort of clear to me. But when I get an email from a lawyer who says you got to use this product, i’m just old and lost. Right, i respect.

31:11

I remember years ago one of my first careers. I worked with young people who were thrown out of school and living on the street one of the larger cities here in Canada. That was my job. I was a program you went to when you got kicked out And we had people transitioning back in the 1980s. So I said to the social worker I said I don’t have a clue what to do.

31:31

So they brought in an expert who said Henry, when they show up as Joe, call them Joe. When they come as Josephine, respect them as Josephine and give them a safe place. And that worked for all the people. These were older 18-year-old teenagers and young adults but it worked And I didn’t need a lot of legislation. I treat with respect. So when it gets to the bees, when we get into, what’s great about the bees? it gives you that sense of peace and quiet and it’s just a fact. If I get too close and do something stupid, they will sting me. There’s no negotiation, it’s not left right, political, whatever oil, no oil. It’s just bees being bees And I think there’s something very therapeutic about that. Today, just to have some peace from all of this, thank you.

Julie Hilsen

Host

32:18

Right, right And just know that it’s okay. It’s okay to be confused. You don’t have to have a resolution right now Like it’s. there’s such immediate gratification, like oh, i’m struggling, i got to end it, i got to take a medication, i’ve got to. you know, sometimes that struggle is how you learn and it’s painful but there’s value to it And, like you said, it strengthens genetics when there’s a struggle, right.

Hank Svec

Guest

32:46

Safety is important because today, especially in schools, schools may not be as safe as they should be, and for all kinds of people and all kinds of children, and that’s not okay.

Julie Hilsen

Host

32:55

Right, absolutely.

Hank Svec

Guest

32:56

So somehow that has to be figured out before we get in. But if everyone can be safe to experience. And then there’s the issue of informed consent, you know, if I’m taking something to change my gender, do I really understand the long term consequences? And it goes beyond, obviously, the bees it goes into. But if we flip it over to nature and what we know about the bees, we don’t know.

33:20

I just heard the other day they’re talking about a vaccine for bees, where we’re going to vaccinate bees so they don’t get certain diseases. That would be the worst thing, in my opinion, you could do, because what you’re going to do is create a group of bees who are going to be not getting a disease that traditional bees learn to fight off, deal with. Nature, helps them, they bring in better food, they learn to deal with it, and the end will be the end of the bees. And that’s what we keep doing. We keep throwing, in fact, with mites. What happened? we keep treating mites. The mites have become super mites and they’re immune to the pesticides that we’re dumping in the bee colonies to kill them. So we just I think transparency is important. You know, we need to understand if we go buy some honey. What was? how was it raised? what’s in it was was a pesticide used, type. What’s did we clip the wings of the queen? I mean, i would want to know those things.

Julie Hilsen

Host

34:14

And to me that resonates with trust, like trust that we’re going to survive, that things are going to work out, like be safe, be respectful, do your best, but you don’t have to micromanage everything to make it work out. Like to me it flashing lights, god, complex, right, like I’m going to control everything, i’m going to inject it, i’m going to you know, and it’s, it’s an interesting we’re, we’re, we’re on this precipice about AI and genetic modifications and groundbreaking research, and you know like, well, if the bees have R and R, and what do you call it? the RMNA.

Hank Svec

Guest

35:03

Right, yeah, i’m not big on that scientific chemical side, but basically the genes are passed through, basically a food.

Julie Hilsen

Host

35:12

If bees are doing that naturally. You know we need to honor that. Our body is like maybe, mother’s breast milk, like you know. It’s just. I know that we are divine beings and we are. We are here to be healthy, not to be fixed.

Hank Svec

Guest

35:26

Well, you know what the answer? one of the things that in clinical practice I did a lot of work with concussions and the 5% of people who don’t recover, and one of the issues we had was getting the cross-disciplinary to talk. So we know that the pituitary gland, if it’s injured, or the or the thyroid if it’s injured in a car accident or some kinds of football injury or some other collision, the brain won’t recover, because the pituitary gland plays a key part in helping your body send out what it needs so that your brain is regenerated. And for some people, when they’re injured, they have an injury to their pituitary that doesn’t. So we would send clients out to see a endocrinologist and say, look, you’re referred here because I had a brain injury and they want to make sure my pituitary gland is okay. And they would say we don’t do that, we don’t deal with brain injuries.

36:16

And you say, well, but there’s a link, there’s this clear scientific link, right, but we couldn’t get anybody to talk unless they’re in their own silo to solve the problem. And women, for example, if they get a brain injury during a certain time through their mental cycle, are more likely to have a concussion and injury than it’s if it’s at a different time in their mental cycle and this has been proven in science because of the contribution of hormones to recovery and actually damage. So it’s clear, it’s clearly it’s not me, it’s in labs and everything. So when you try to bring it down to, okay, this person sitting across from me has not recovered five years after a concussion. Does it not make sense that we go through the whole list of things that could be causing this problem, including hormonal issues? Try getting that done. They don’t want to talk. It’s like so frustrating.

37:04

And so when we look at the honeybees, people say, well, it’s because of this problem or that problem. It’s such a combination of things that we have to all kind of work together Everything from you know the habitat, what the farmers are spraying the climate, how we’re raising the bees, where did the queens come from, the genetics and all of that. So if we, it’s kind of reinforces. It’s almost like there’s a universal language. I know that’s your podcast of love and stuff, but there’s a universal language of common sense and complementary health where if we did it all together, it would be so much better for everybody.

Julie Hilsen

Host

37:45

Right And let’s just hold that vision because it’s important, very important. Well, we’re getting close to our time and I wanted to. I wanted you to share, if you could like somebody not everyone can keep bees, but what would be something you mentioned quickly previously, things you could plant, but like just to give people cliff notes on what they could plant or have in their yards, just as a suburban person or even a city person with pots on their back porch or outside their window cell, what could they do to enhance the bee survival or help the ecosystem to restore?

Hank Svec

Guest

38:26

There’s a number of things. One is, i think first we talked about where you just immerse yourself to make it important, so you can feel like it matters. So someone telling you something isn’t the same as going out and sitting with it. If you’re sitting in a clover field when bees are flying around or a wildflower field, they’re sitting in the forest when they’re out working trees for propolis sap or something, you get a connection to the. I would say get a connection, whatever that means for the listener.

Promoting Bee Conservation and Engagement

38:51

The second thing is do what you can. I mean it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to buy land like us and turn it back over or whatever. Do whatever. So if you have a small area, i love clovers, so depending on where you live, there may be a different type Go to your seed store And now clover planting here I just planted some in some land that didn’t work out with some other wildflowers. We call it frost planting, so you seed it on the surface and then Mother Nature, through frost and thawing, takes it down through the cracks and plants it for you. All you have to do is throw it on your lawn or throw it on your just sprinkle.

Julie Hilsen

Host

39:25

Sprinkle your fairy dust seeds.

Hank Svec

Guest

39:30

And while some wildflowers you have to talk to the people have a different method, but clovers in general you can do it And then they, they, they just go. So I just planted what’s called double cut red clover And what it does is it grows and it’s really good for bumblebees, but it takes a really high acidic soil, which we have. It’s one of the highest in one area that we could. So that’s one example. The other thing we have I’m not sure what it’s like where you are in Georgia, but here we have thousands of miles of ditches and road sides that are cut and sprayed every year, not because of safety but because of cosmetic reasons. So if you can write an email to your local elected official, say, can we keep sections of our side roads open and not spray? And like in my little community here they spend $2 million cutting and spraying land that should be for bees and other wildlife And it’s not because of visual you know danger, not seeing the road or anything, it’s just cosmetic. So if you can somehow get that involved in your local community and do that and spend a day on a, on a, on a honeybee farm, regardless, it doesn’t matter how people are raising bees.

40:35

I always say, however you raise bees is great, whether it’s all the way over here on the livestock side or all the way over here on the they’re now called treatment bee keepers. And then we’re servant beekeepers. We’re kind of just over a bit because we will do things like plant clover for bees and do some changes to the environment, and sometimes we will split a hive. I do what’s called a walk away split, where you sort of purposely take one hive and make two, just by taking the top, moving it over, putting it over there, and they figure it out, and so it’s called a no-look walk-away split. We use, which is an easy way. But other than that, get involved that way, and I think you’ll find that every little bit helps, right. Like we always say well, it’s big oil or it’s this. No, it’s just we all need to take some responsibility.

Julie Hilsen

Host

41:24

Like you said, the bees produce hundreds of pounds of honey, but they each do their little tiny job. They only live six weeks and then they’re dying. So yeah, every little bit helps and you matter, all your actions matter.

Hank Svec

Guest

41:38

And they give back to you By being around them. Like your stress levels drop. If you watch bees, just say you plant some flowers or you already have flowers. You watch bees. Take 10 or 15 minutes and watch them work a flower. If you were hooked up to any kind of self-monitoring, your heart rate drops, your blood pressure drops and your whole body gets a rejuvenated kind of health moment, not to mention your stress. And I’m really looking forward to getting out in a couple of weeks, hopefully. We had snow again the other day here, but they fly in between the snow, which I find incredible, like it snows, and then all of a sudden it stops, the sun comes up and they go out and find food. And the other day we were so obsessed with finding out where we couldn’t find out, and then we found these little flowers that were just peeking out of the snow, called hairy bittercress, just a little tiny flower, and that’s what they were getting some of their pollen and nectar from. Just unbelievable, anyway. So that’s what I’d recommend. That’s too much talking.

Julie Hilsen

Host

42:32

No, and you did a great job. on your website. You have videos and they’re also on YouTube where you can capture these moments. I watched the one where you’re like we had a frost and a couple blooms and I didn’t see that one. So I had a dream that the other night I had a dream that bees swarmed my pool heater And I was like that’s not a good place for you guys. I was trying to call my friend who has a hive to come and see if he could.

Embracing Continous Learning and Open-Mindedness

Hank Svec

Guest

43:00

As you know, when they swarm they pretty much are harmless because they’re so full of honey they can’t sting you right.

Julie Hilsen

Host

43:05

But call someone.

Hank Svec

Guest

43:07

Don’t mess with them unless you know what you’re doing. I don’t generally See. remember what happens when they swarm. They hang around until the scouts find a place and they have to vote And if 75% of the voters agree, they go move to that house. So if you just leave Malone for a day, maybe two, they will go and find another place to live. You don’t have to worry about them.

Julie Hilsen

Host

43:28

They’ll find it.

Hank Svec

Guest

43:29

Yeah, they’ll find a place.

Julie Hilsen

Host

43:30

Oh, my goodness, well, you have so much knowledge and I commend and honor your efforts And it’s really cool. It’s really cool to have this conversation and share these things And I hope the audience enjoyed it as much as I have.

Hank Svec

Guest

43:44

Well, thanks, julie. I just want to say that there’s no such thing as an expert. I’m about 5% knowledge I might have. The rest is a coin flip, and that’s what motivates me every day, the rest of my life, because I will never learn enough about this And I don’t think any of us will. But we can just keep trying right, just keep and listening and being open to don’t get stuck in any kind of certain theoretical framework. It has to be done this way or that way. It’s whatever the bees tell you, they’ll tell you.

Julie Hilsen

Host

44:09

They’ll tell you. They’ll tell you Like self-compassion, like I’m just learning, you know, yeah, i’m not perfect. We’re just trying to get through this.

Hank Svec

Guest

44:18

We all make you out. That’s true, that’s true.

Julie Hilsen

Host

44:21

Oh, thank you so much.

Hank Svec

Guest

44:23

Thank you, julie, i really appreciate it.