How to pronounce "pricking"

Transcriber: Bob Prottas Reviewer: Ivana Korom

Now that your minds are open

I would like to tell you my goal for this talk.

Which is to change your perspective on many things.

How about this for one?

(Laughter)

This man is wearing what we call a "Bee Beard."

A beard full of bees.

Now this is what many of you might picture

when you think about honeybees.

Maybe insects or maybe anything that has more legs than two.

And let me start by telling you I gotcha. I understand that.

But there are many things to know

and I want you to open your minds here,

keep them open and change your perspective about honeybees.

Notice that this man is not getting stung.

He probably has a queen bee tied to his chin

and the other bees are attracted to it.

so this really demonstrates our relationship with honeybees

and that goes deep back for thousands of years.

We're very co-evolved because we depend on bees for pollination

and even more recently as an economic commodity.

Many of you may have heard that honeybees are disappearing.

Not just dying, but they're gone.

We don't even find dead bodies.

This is called "Colony Collapse Disorder"

and it's bizarre.

Researchers around the globe still do not know what's causing it.

But what we do know is that with the declining numbers of bees

the costs of over a 130 fruit and vegetable crops that we rely on

for food is going up in price.

So honeybees are important for their roll in the economy

as well as in agriculture.

Here you can see some pictures of what are called green roofs

or urban agriculture.

We're familiar with the image on the left.

That shows a local neighborhood garden in the south end.

That's where I call home. I have a beehive in the backyard.

And perhaps a green roof in the future

when we're further utilizing urban areas

where there are stacks of garden spaces.

Check out this image above the orange line in Boston.

Try to spot the beehive.

It's there!

It's on the rooftop right on the corner there

and it's been there for a couple of years now.

The way that urban beekeeping currently operates is that the

beehives are quite hidden and it's not because they need to be,

it's just because people are uncomfortable with the idea.

And that's why I want you today to try to think about this.

Think about the benefits of bees in cities

and why they really are a terrific thing.

Let me give you a brief rundown on how pollination works.

So we know flowers. We know fruits and vegetables.

Even some alfalfa and hay that the livestock

for the meats that we eat rely on pollinators.

But you've got male and female parts to a plant here

and basically the pollinators are attracted to plants for their nectar

and in the process a bee will visit some flowers and pick up some pollen

or that male, kind of sperm counterpart along the way

and then travel to different flowers

and eventually, an apple in this case will be produced.

You can see the orientation, the stem is down.

The blossom end has fallen off by the time we eat it.

But that's a basic overview of how pollination works.

And let's think about urban living, not today and not in the past

but what about in 100 years.

What's it going to look like?

We have huge, grand challenges these days of habitat loss.

We have more and more people, billions of people.

In 100 years god knows how many people and how little space

there will be to fit all of them.

So we need to change the way that we see cities.

And looking at this picture on the left of New York City today

you can see how gray and brown it is.

We have tarpaper on the rooftops

that bounces heat back into the atmosphere.

Contributing to global climate change no doubt.

What about in 100 years. If we have green rooftops everywhere

and gardening and we create our own crops right in the cities.

We save on the cost of transportation.

We save on a healthier diet

and we also educate and create new jobs locally.

We need bees for the future of our cities and urban living.

Here's some data that we collected

through our company with Best Bees.

Where we deliver, install and manage honeybee hives

for anybody who wants them.

In the city, in the countryside.

And we introduce honeybees and the idea of beekeeping

in your own back yard or rooftop or fire escape for even that matter.

And seeing how simple it is and how possible it is.

There's a counterintuitive trend that we noticed in these numbers.

So let's look at the first metric here.

Overwintering survival.

Now this has been a huge problem for many years.

Basically since the late 1980's when the Varroa Mite came

and brought many different viruses, bacteria and fungal diseases with it.

Overwintering success is hard and that's when most of the colonies are lost.

And we found that in the cities bees are surviving better

than they are in the country. A bit counterintuitive right?

We think, Oh bees, countryside, agriculture.

But that's not what the bees are showing.

The bees like it in the city.

Furthermore, they also produce more honey.

The urban honey is delicious.

The bees in Boston on the rooftop of the Seaport Hotel

where we have hundreds of thousands of bees flying overhead right now -

that I'm sure none of you noticed when we walked by -

are going to all of the local community gardens

and making delicious, healthy honey

that just tastes like the flowers in our city.

So the yield for urban hives in terms of honey production

is higher as well

as the overwintering survival compared to rural areas.

Again a bit counterintuitive.

And looking back historically at the timeline of honeybee health

we can go back to the year 950 and see that there was also

a great mortality of bees in Ireland.

So the problem with bees today isn't necessarily something new.

It has been happening since over 1,000 years ago.

But what we don't really notice are these problems in cities.

One thing I want to encourage you to think about

is the idea of what an urban island is.

You think in the city maybe the temperature is warmer.

Why are bees doing better in the city?

This is a big question now to help us understand

why they should be in the city.

Perhaps there's more pollen in the city

with the trains coming into urban hubs

they can carry pollen with them,

very light pollen and it's just a big supermarket in the city.

Lot of linden trees live along the railroad tracks.

Perhaps there are fewer pesticides in the cities

than there are in [rural] areas.

Perhaps there are other things we're just not thinking about yet.

But that's one idea to think about, urban islands.

And Colony Collapse Disorder

is not the only thing affecting honeybees.

Honeybees are dying and it's a huge,

huge grand challenge of our time.

What you can see up here is a map of the world

and we're tracking the spread of this Varroa Mite.

Now the Varroa Mite is what changed the game in beekeeping.

And you can see at the top right the years are changing.

We're coming up to modern times

and you can see the spread of the Varroa Mite.

From the early 1900's through now it's 1968

and we're pretty much covering Asia.

1971 we saw it spread to Europe and South America.

And then when we get to the 1980's

and specifically in 1987,

the Varroa Mite finally came

to North America, to the United States.

And that is when the game changed

for honeybees in the United States.

Many of us will remember our childhood growing up

maybe you got stung by a bee, you saw bees in flowers.

Think of the kids today.

Their childhood's a bit different.

They don't experience this.

The bees just aren't around anymore.

So we need bees and they're disappearing and it's a big problem.

What can we do here?

So what I do is honeybee research.

I got my PhD studying honeybee health.

I started in 2005 studying honeybees.

In 2006 honeybees started disappearing.

So suddenly like this little nerd kid

going to school working with bugs

became very relevant in the world. (Laughter)

It just was serendipitously.

And it worked out that way.

So my research focuses on ways to make bees healthier.

I don't research what's killing the bees per se.

I'm not one of the many researchers around the world

who's looking at the effects of pesticides or diseases

or habitat loss and poor nutrition on bees.

I'm a step beyond that.

We're looking at ways to make bees healthier through vaccines.

Through yogurt, like probiotics, and other types of therapies.

In ways that can be fed orally to bees

and this process is so easy even a 7 year old can do it.

You just mix up some pollen, sugar and water

and whatever active ingredient you want to put in and give it

to the bees, no chemicals involved. Just immune boosters.

Humans think about our own health in a prospective way.

We exercise, we eat healthy, we take vitamins.

Why don't we think about honeybees in that same type of way?

Bring them to areas where they're thriving

and try to make them healthier before they get sick.

I spent many years in grad school trying to poke bees

and do vaccines with needles. (Laughter)

Like years. Years at the bench.

Oh my gosh, it's 3 am and I'm still pricking bees.

And then one day I said

"Why don't we just do an oral vaccine?"

It's like, "Ugh", so that's what we do.

(Laughter)

I'd love to share with you some images of urban bee hives.

Because they can be anything.

I mean really open you mind with this.

You can paint a hive to match your home.

You can hide a hive inside your home.

These are three hives on the rooftop of the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel.

And they're beautiful here.

We matched the new color of the inside of their rooms

to do some type of a stained wood with blue for their sheets.

And these bees are terrific.

And they also will use herbs that are growing in the garden.

That's what the chefs go to to use for their cooking.

And the honey. They do live events.

They'll use that honey at their bars.

Honey is a great nutritional substitute for regular sugar

because of different types of sugars in there.

We also have a classroom hives project

where - this is a nonprofit venture -

we're spreading the word around the world

for how honeybee hives can be taken into the classroom

or into the museum setting behind glass

and used as an educational tool.

This hive that you see here,

has been in Fenway High School for many years now.

The bees fly right into the outfield of Fenway Park.

Nobody notices it.

If you're not a flower, these bees do not care about you.

(Laughter)

They don't. They don't.

They'll say "S'cuse me, flying around."

So there are a lot of different things to learn about bees.

We work with Italian bees and they are very docile.

They are good honey producers.

They're not an aggressive type of bee.

That's something to learn about. There are different kinds.

And students in this geometry classroom

have learned how that hexagonal shape has evolved in nature.

Why don't bees make a square pattern in the wax?

Why don't they do triangle?

And the teacher there, Benedette Manning, just won

an outstanding teacher of the year award

from the Boston public school system for her work

with honeybees in the classroom.

It's terrific.

Some other images here in telling a part of the story

that really made urban beekeeping terrific

is in New York City beekeeping was illegal until 2010.

That's a big problem because what's going

to pollenate all of the gardens and the produce locally? Hands?

I mean locally in Boston there is a terrific company

called Green City Growers and they are going and pollenating

our squash crops by hand with Q-tips.

And if they miss that three day window there's no fruit.

Their clients aren't happy and people go hungry.

So this is important. We have also some images of honey from Brooklyn.

Now this was a mystery in the NY Times

where the honey was very red.

And the New York state forensics department came in

and actually did some science to match the red dye with that

found in a maraschino cherry factory down the street. (Laughter)

So you can tailor your honey to taste however you want

by planting bee friendly flowers.

Paris has been a terrific model for urban beekeeping.

They've had hives on the rooftop of their opera house

for many years now and that's what really

got people started thinking.

Wow, we can do this and we should do this.

Also in London and in Europe across the board

they're very advanced in their use of green rooftops

and integrating beehives.

And I'll show you an ending note here.

I would like to encourage you to open your mind.

What can you do to save the bees or to help them

or to think of sustainable cities in the future?

Well really just change your perspective.

Try to understand that bees are very important.

A bee isn't going to sting you if you see it.

The bee dies. Honeybees die when they sting.

So they don't want to do it either. (Laughter)

It's nothing to panic about.

They're all over the city.

You could even get your own hive if you want.

There are great resources available, and even companies

that will help you set up and mentor you.

And it's important for our educational system in the world

for students to learn about agriculture worldwide.

Such as this little girl who, again, is not even getting stung.

Thank you.

(Applause)