Honey Bees. Vital Pollinators. Beekeeper Inspirations

Sustainable honey bee beekeepers Melanie Margarita Kirby, Mmabatho Portia Morudi, and Andy Friedrichs highlight the essential role of bees as crucial pollinators for crops and flowers. Honey bees are declining and the challenge lies in creating a sustainable earth for future generations.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Your positive, positive, positiveimprint, imprint, imprint,

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imprint stories are everywhere.
People and their positive actioninspire positive achievements.
Your PI could mean the world to you.
Get ready for your positive imprint.

Catherine (00:18):
Hello there.
I'm Catherine, your host ofthis Variety show podcast.
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(00:42):
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Music by the legendaryand talented, Chris Nole.
ChrisNole.com C-H-R-I-S-N-O-L-E.

(01:04):
Thank you again for listeningand for your support of this
podcast, your positive imprint.
What's your P.I.?
Today is inspiration Monday andtoday's episode features inspirations
from three, your positive imprint,sustainable beekeepers, Melanie
Margarita Kirby, Mmabatho PortiaMorudi, and Andy Friedrichs.

(01:26):
At the end of the episode, I willprovide the episode numbers and a bit of
information on these amazing beekeepers.
These honeybee beekeepers sharetheir experiences with honeybees
and their knowledge with beekeeping,a menagerie of inspiration.

Andy Friedrichs (01:51):
Bees are one of the most important animals,
uh, the insects in the world.
Honey

Catherine (01:57):
bees globally are declining for various reasons.
They are one of the major contributingpollinators of our flowers and
of course of the crops we love,such as apples, peaches, broccoli,
squash, pumpkins, papaya, berries,nuts, and just so much more.

Mmabatho Portia Porudi: Bees are not the problem. (02:15):
undefined
They are the solution.

Melanie Margarita Kirby (02:18):
They really have become the backbone of American
agriculture, and so they say oneout of every three bites you take is
dependent on honeybee pollination.
How do we create an

Mmabatho Portia Porudi (02:29):
earth that future generations would love to live in?
What you find is that they practicewhat we call honey hunting as
opposed to sustainable beekeeping.
So honey hunting means peoplewould go into the forest and then
burn a large chunk of the forestjust to get one hive destroying

(02:52):
the whole colony in the process.
Deforestation is also a big thingbecause you must remember we use
the wood for your charcoals, sothat also destroys the environment.
We want to save the bees, but now howdo we say don't chop down the trees

(03:16):
without offering another alternative?
Bee farming for us was a alternative andthen saying, we'll create a market for
this honey so that you have an income.
I believe our model, it can createa sustainable earth for people to
to live in, becoming custodiansof their natural resources.

(03:40):
An example with the village at the borderof Mozambique, um, in South Africa where
they struggle with crop raiding elephantsbased on a study by Dr. Lucy King in
Kenya, where they had proved that beesare natural deterrence to to elephants.
We communicated with the tribal council,they set out a group of individuals

(04:03):
from the village that we could train.
We built this beeline fence.
At the time, the fence was about400 meters, so about 40 hives,
and that successfully kept theelephants out of the village.
The produce from them, it's about creatingmore income streams for the communities

Catherine (04:25):
beekeeper.
Andy Friedrichs of Norway, thebeehives he is responsible for are
located deep in the mystic forestsurrounding the Kleivstua Hotell

Andy Friedrichs (04:36):
I always want to have my own bees.
And in Norway they use the, thenormal Norwegian style, the Norwegian
hives where you have to interruptthe bees and and disturb them.
And every time you have totake honey, you just have to
promote them to get aggressive.
When they take out the trays, like thehoney to scrape it out then you have,

(04:57):
uh, you got the bees, um, everywhere.
With my time limit.
How can I make sure thebees are in good hands?
I found the, the honeyflow from Australia.
I just kind of contacted them.
See has this ever been tested in Norway?
And kind of, no.
I was one of the first in almostEurope who started with this project.
After one year, I finally succeeded toget the bees inside the hives together

(05:23):
with the, the Norwegian Bee Clubs.
And after one and a half months westarted to could harvest the honey.
The bees have to decide when andwhere they have to change the queen.
So I had the same queen foralmost two and a half years.
Then I saw it was a new one.
I don't disturb them.
I can see how they work.

(05:45):
I only have two hives.
It's mostly just to show people that wehave to, to look at the environment we
have to take care of, of things around us.
We have a lot of bushes withberries like raspberries especially,
and we have a lot of flowers.
We make sure they are alive all thetimes when we have the season for the
bees to be a good environ for the bees.

(06:06):
It's an animal who's dying out.
But all the poison people are doing.
Norway, everybody's fightingnow for the, the bees should
have better, better environment.
It's not allowed to be hivesclose to the roads anymore.
I'm not a hundred percent educatedbeekeeper, but I still wanted my own
bees and to have these bees I wantto make sure they, they are healthy.

Catherine (06:29):
You had this idea of not producing a whole bunch of
honey for the hotel, but abouteducation and environmental advocacy.

Melanie Margarita Kirby (06:40):
I wanted to enlist in the Peace Corps and to be of
service to the world at large, and gotstationed in Paraguay in South America.
My assignment was beekeeping.
We had to build everything from scratch.
They didn't have power tools,nonetheless, credit cards to buy things.
We, um, made our own beehive boxes.
They would start with one hive, maybe getup to two or three and harvest the honey.

(07:04):
And we started a little farmer's market.
And with the money that these womenearned, they were then able to buy
their children's shoes, notebooks,pens, and, you know, pay for school
because they didn't have public school.
I have my own small farm.
I have anywhere between 200 to 300hives, and there are operators who have.
10,000, even 80,000 colonies of beehives,and I see it as my contribution to

(07:29):
supporting not only local pollinationneeds, but to supporting biodiversity.
I am very mindful of theother 4,000 different kinds of
solitary bees that we have on the
continent.
So I try not to oversaturate any area.
If we get too many hives in one areaand it then out competes all these other
species that also need pollen and nectar.

(07:51):
And some of those other pollinatorspecies are what we call specialists.
So if honeybees are generalists,meaning that they, they eat a
variety of things, some of the otherpollinators that are specialists
only rely on one particular flower.
And so if that flower is already,you know, pollinated and the
nectar's already sucked up, thenthey don't get the food they need.

(08:14):
And so that really impacts thatbroader web of biodiversity.
You add on pesticides, loss of habitat,compromised agricultural practices on
this one critter that's been exploited.
There's different ways of beekeeping,and I think as people figure out
what their full own philosophyis, what their community has and

(08:37):
what their community can support,then they can determine, you know.
If that's a good fit for them or not.

Mmabatho Portia Porudi (08:45):
We've got so much work that we need to do and it starts
with us making a decision to say we aregoing to work in harmony with nature,

Andy Friedrichs (08:56):
take care of the nature, because without us, we can't live.
The bees, for me, is a good example.
I can just see how many extraflowers we have, have gotten
after we started the hives.
So don't take the bees for granted.

Catherine (09:12):
Conscientious beekeeping, sustainable beekeeping.
If we want these

Melanie Margarita Kirby (09:18):
various organisms to sustain themselves and to
survive, then what is it that we needto do or should be doing in order to
allow for that to happen and especiallyfor it to happen naturally and really
support, um, a quality of life that's
that's positive

Catherine (09:37):
for all these organisms.
Thank you again to Chris Nolefor permission to use his music.
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My website, yourpositiveimprint.com.
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Thank you so much for your support andfor listening to your positive imprint.
So try to change your perspective inorder to understand the reality of others.

(10:20):
Melanie Margarita Kirby of UnitedStates is an internationally renowned
honeybee apologist who breeds QueenBees ZiaQueenBees.com Melanie provides
brilliant information regarding honeybees.
Episodes 130 and 131.
Mmabatho Portia Morudi, of South Africaruns The Village Market, South Africa.

(10:43):
LocalVillag.Africa.
Learn how she saves elephants,honeybees, and their habitats.
Episode 210.
Andy Friedrichs does his beekeepingin Norway at Kleivstua Hotell.
Social Media, K-L-E-I-V-S-T-U-A.
Learn more about Andy Friedrichs fromthe Mystic Forests of Norway, where he

(11:06):
shares education about how you can startraising honeybees in your backyard.
Episode 116.
And until next time, enjoy listeningto over 200 episodes of your positive
imprint, your positive imprint.
What's your P.I.?