If You Like BEES - WATCH THIS 🐝 // S05E08

High five to Surfshark VPN for sponsoring this video. Our friends following this adventure know that we are currently filming a series about driving around the world but it isn't all about reaching our final destination of Australia. It's about the journey and all the interesting things we learn from the people and places we visit on the way. The ---- of insects mixed with the saliva of bees. This time we've been invited to a remote community in northern Germany where we're facing fears to learn about bees and you're gonna be blown away by what we've discovered. That's literally my worst nightmare. He has my worst nightmare job. We are driving around the world. You guys are invited too so subscribe and buckle up. It's one heck of a ride. You might not know this about me but I have an embarrassingly irrational fear of bees. So far we are absolutely loving Germany. Okay you're getting attacked by wasps. Oh we got a bee on you. I know I knew that. The people that are supporting our content can enjoy without being interrupted by ants. There's a bee in here. Oh no! Emergency! Cut! Self-defense mode. I'm ready. All the bugs along the way and a bee. I thought that was a bee. No it's not. A bee came straight in the window and stung me on the finger. Ben I need to go out right now. Move out the way so I can leave. Ben let's leave. Ben I need to go please. What's going on? Ben! Leo is um is having a battle with a wasp that doesn't even know that she's there. Ben can you please leave such to it? No you need to go. I'm not stopping you. Where are you going? Where are you going? Freaking big wasp got stuck in my hair. Bloody hell. I hate wasps. It's not that I hate bees but I certainly try to avoid them. So I wasn't exactly thrilled when Ben suggested that we meet up with this intriguing Combi Crew member who in my opinion has the most terrifying job in the world. My name is Fabian. I'm a beekeeper. I have a lot of beehives and I do research with the bees. I'm interested in the way different cultures interact with bees and what old and ancient rituals they are and magic about the bees and old spells. When the weather is nice I like to sit here on my bench and watch the bees fly in and out, meditate into the bees. In Britain there is a saying, ask the bees what the druids knew. They believe that the bees are a place where knowledge and wisdom is inside and when you watch closely you can access this old knowledge. Fabian is obviously a unique character and it's not just his job which makes him interesting. He has been roaming barefoot for over a decade. He said you don't ever wear shoes even in the winter. No I don't wear shoes at all, not in the winter time even when it's really cold here. It seems crazy. Fabian was just telling me that he likes all insects that sting. That's literally my worst nightmare. He has my worst nightmare job. It's not very good weather for visiting the bees. They don't like the rainy weather. When you say they don't like it, it doesn't mean they get angrier. Do they get more aggressive when it's raining? Yes. Do they? That face. Lea's face is a picture. So what do you do with the bees? Are they just your pets? No. First of all I have them for the honey of course. I sell the honey and I do a lot of work with children, with schools, with kindergartens and teach them about the bees and nature. How do the kids react to the bees? They have no fear at all most of them. It's more the teachers who are afraid. Like me. I think adults are more afraid of bees than kids are. Yeah that's a really good, I like that you teach them about, because bees are very important, so it's nice for the kids to learn that. We already knew that bees were important to our ecosystem and it is estimated that a third of all the food we consume relies on pollination, which for the most part comes from honeybees. But at this point we knew nothing about the wonderful and bizarre life of the honeybee. So the bees make the honey. When the worker bees fly out they go to different flowers and they collect the nectar of the flowers and then they bring back the nectar and when they come home they give the nectar to other bees right at the entrance. They transport the nectar in their stomach and then when they come home they vomit it out and another bee takes it in their stomach and then they bring it deeper inside the hive. And there the honey goes from bee to bee. Every bee puts it in their stomach and then they vomit it out again. This happens about six to eight times and then it's not nectar anymore, then it's the honey. And when the honey is finished the bees put it in a little cell and then they seal it with a little top of beeswax. Bees don't only collect the nectar of flowers, they collect honeydew, which is actually the ---- of little other insects who feed on the plants and they eat the sugary plant juices and then they ---- out a sweet juice and it's called honeydew. So you can say some honey is ---- from insects vomited out by bees. Worker bees are unfertile female bees and they do basically all the work which is to do in a beehive and it depends on how old they are which work they are doing. Right after they are hatched they turn around and clean up their own mess. That's the first thing they do in their life and after that they care about the larvae and feed the larvae. After that they are the construction workers of the beehive and they build the combs. After that they become the guards in the entrance who protect the beehive. After that they become the bees that fly out and collect the honey, the nectar and the pollen. And after that they become bees that collect water because collecting water is the most dangerous work the bees do. Only one of 10 bees who are flying out to get water comes back. The male bees are only in a beehive in springtime. They don't work like the worker bees. They can't even feed themselves they have to be fed by the other worker bees. They're only there for mating with the new queens. In the swarm season when they mate with the queen the male bees die after they mated and in the process when they mate their penises explode and the male bee falls down. The penis of the male bee is in the queen after that and then another male bee comes and has to pull out the old penis in order to mate with the queen again. And one queen mates with up to 12, 20 different male bees. The queen flies back to the hive. She is accompanied by a small amount of worker bees to protect her during the mating flight and when they are home again there are special worker bees which have to pull out the last penis. Is that like the last job you get as a bee? There is still a lot which is not known about the bees although they are really good researched by now. But there are still a few mysteries how they work and how they do some things. And the one mystery I'm most interested in is how they find their mating places. So in the swarm season when the young queens hatch and they fly out they go to a special place which can be up to 20 kilometers away from the hive. And on this place they meet with hundreds of male bees which come from different hives all around the area. And we don't know yet how the bees find this place because it's not a place which is the same every year. It changes but the drones as well as the queens they find the place every year. They know where to fly but we have no idea how they choose it and how they know where to go in this year. As a regular consumer of honey I was honestly surprised to hear about the bees lifestyle. And by now curiosity had begun to replace fear and I was keen to see the bees up close. You can use almost everything which smokes. Smells great. But here in this region we use this plant especially because it has some magical properties they believed back then. It calms the bees down. So the smoke itself doesn't calm the bees. When you smoke the bees they think the forest is burning and then they go and take in the honey in their in their stomach in order to prepare to leave the beehive to swarm out and go to a better location. And because of this action they are occupied and don't bother to sting anyone. Fabian might be happy to greet the bees barefoot in shorts and t-shirt but there is no way Leo was standing next to an open beehive without a little protection. So this is a freshly built comb. It's not down to the bottom and there is no honey or larvae or eggs in there yet because it's just freshly built. On this side you can actually see there is honey. The cells are full. They put this little top on top of it which is made out of beeswax and under there it's full of honey. Oh yummy. They are very calm. You can touch them. Are you touching those bees right now? You can pet them. No way am I petting them. They are very soft. Oh my gosh. They were all busy taking in the honey because of the smoke so they don't bother stinging or doing anything. Here you can see this looks a little different than when you blow a little bit they go away. This looks a little different than here. Oh on top there's the honey and here they are the larvae which morph into the adult bees and then they hatch out of these little cells. The queen lays up to 2000 eggs a day in summertime. It's more than her own weight. What the heck? How? How often do you get stung? Maybe once a week. Once a week that's a lot. Once a week Lia. You said not a lot. Wow I got stung the other day and I'm like ah look it's still there the stinger. Once a week I can't imagine. Holy crap I didn't realize it was so dangerous to visit you. You must be immune to the bees. Yes sort of. It doesn't get big or anything. Just stings a little and then it's over. A beekeeper that's not so much caring about the bees and who is very rough then the bees recognize him and they are very angry at him. In order to make this much of honey the bees have to work almost 10 000 working hours all together in order to create this amount of honey and they have to fly a distance all together at least one two times around the whole earth. This is pollen. It's very rich in proteins so it's very nutritious and it contains a lot of enzymes, bacteria. It's good for your health, boosts your immune system. There are several of special honeys around the world. Most of them come from plants that are intoxicating themselves and the substances from the plants are in the nectar too and get in the honey and then you can harvest the honey which has the same properties as the plant itself and it creates a honey which is used by ancient cultures and special rituals and it has some magic properties. What did you say it's called in Turkey? In Turkey they have a honey which is made from a rhododendron flower and it's called Delibal there which means mad honey. So we should look out for that on our travels. You should do that. It's a very interesting experience to try that honey. I have written a book about this topic. About my research I did also contains a big chapter on the topic of intoxicating honeys from all around the world. This video series that we're sharing on YouTube is made possible through the support of the Kombi crew and it was great to see what one of our members was doing for his own work and to be able to share such a fascinating story in the process. Like we said travel is about discovering the world we live in and we feel blessed to be able to share the ride with you guys at home. Thank you and until next time happy travels. That was the first time that we've ever used animation in one of our videos and it was really fun to be working with an animator it was actually my friend George from Melbourne Australia so thank you so much to her she did an amazing job and it was really really fun to work on a video like that. Nice one George. Also thank you to Surfshark for sponsoring this video we really appreciate it. If you guys don't have a VPN we can personally vouch for Surfshark. We've been using them for over a year now. It allows us to connect to the internet without any concerns over losing privacy when we're connecting to public wi-fi which we do all the time. We use Surfshark VPN anytime we're connecting to a public wi-fi because it ensures that our data is encrypted and not vulnerable to any attacks. Yeah Surfshark is good because it allows us to use unlimited devices so I use it on my computer Ben uses on his computer iPad and there's also apps it's really easy to use as well it's completely intuitive it allows us to jump to other countries with our internet connections. We use this service all the time if you don't have a VPN we definitely highly recommend this one and we will leave a link to a deal below where you can get 83% off a two-year membership and three months free oh yeah three months free nice so thanks so much to Surfshark for sponsoring this video also if you guys are in the Kombi crew we'll leave a link to the interactive map below so you can put a pin on our map and we can come and meet up with you when we come through your part of the world it's how we met Fabian in this video and collaborated with him and it's how we can come for a little adventure in your neck of the woods too so don't forget to leave a pin on the interactive map if you're in the Kombi crew otherwise we'll see you next time guys thanks for watching