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Joey Wahler (Host): In this segment, we have the opportunity to explore a hobby that's a great passion of our guest's, namely beekeeping, the maintenance of bee colonies and man-made hives. So we're discussing what beekeeping is and its potential health benefits. This is Celebrate Health, the podcast sponsored by San Juan Regional Medical Center. Thanks for listening. I'm Joey Wahler. Our guest, Dr. Brad Scoggins, Pediatrician at San Juan Health Partners Pediatrics. Dr. Scoggins, thanks so much for joining us.

Brad Scoggins, DO (Guest): Hey, thanks for having me Joey.

Host: Same here. So how and where did you get into beekeeping in the first place?

Dr. Scoggins: Yeah, a great question. I looked back and I had an Attending, a Pediatric Neurology Attending in residency that talked about his bees and beekeeping. And I said, man, as soon as I have enough discretionary income and time, I want to do that. So about the second year I was here and I've been here almost eight years now, I bought a hive. It quickly died and had me very discouraged. So then I decided from that point, I was going to be a much better beekeeper and got incrementally more hives over the following six years. And at this point I think I have almost 40 hives that I work.

Host: Now let's back up for just a moment, for the uninitiated, you bought your first hive, where do you buy it?

Dr. Scoggins: Well, there's a few ways to secure a BS. Number one, if you have the stomach for it and, the uh, ability to control your anxiety is go catch a swarm, and then you just kind of let your friends and family know that if they see a honeybee swarm to call you and you can come out. The other way is you find either a local beekeeper, which would be my preference, or one of the big national beekeeping package producers, and you buy bees from one of those folks. In this case, I bought my bees from another fellow physician here in town.

Host: Interesting. So doctors in your area have a thing for beekeeping, right?

Dr. Scoggins: There's a few of us. I'd say there, there may be half a dozen at this point with some folks I'm selling bees to this year. So yeah, there may be half a dozen of us.

Host: Of course the good news doc is if somebody gets stung, you know what you're doing and you have the people to address it, right?

Dr. Scoggins: Absolutely. And, I do carry an epi pen and I have some hives in fairly public places, namely at one of our local nurseries. I keep a few hives over there and I supply them with an epi pen just in case somebody gets stung.

Host: So again for those unfamiliar, and then we'll get into a few more nitty-gritty details. For most of us, I think beekeepers, means to us, there are bees, there's a hive, there's honey, there's someone presiding over this. And in this case, you, so what's going on? What are you doing with these bees?

Dr. Scoggins: Great question. There's so many things to do with bees and people keep them for a myriad of reasons. Some people do it, in an effort to help the environment which it undoubtedly does through pollination. Other people keep them to help pollinate their own backyard gardens.

Some people just, enjoy the therapeutic experience that is just sitting in a lawn chair sometimes with a beer, watching your bees come and go from the hive. That's actually a tradition that goes back a few hundred years. Folks of all stations of life in the UK, just about all of them used to have a family beehive that they kept in the backyard and the bees were considered to be a part of the family. They would actually go engage in something called the telling of the bees. So if there was a death in the family, if there was a marriage, if there was a birth, any major event in the family, people would go sit down much like I described and talk to their bees. Now looking back, even further in, in the evolution of, of bees and man together, going back 3000 years to the ancient Egyptians, bees were considered to be messengers to the afterlife and to, to the worlds beyond.

So there's a long history of people keeping honeybees. Sometimes for the honey, sometimes for the companionship. One of my favorite stories is in the UK, in the provincial UK, they used to, if there was a wedding, they would take a piece of wedding cake and set it on top of the hive for the bees to enjoy with the family.

Host: Really? Well, I think that brings us to a natural question. How often are you stung and how do you keep from getting stung?

Dr. Scoggins: Sure. That's a great question. And one that comes up very early in most people's undertaking of beekeeping. So the short answer is yes, you will get stung. These days I almost never get stung intentionally. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. Bees are not unhappy that I'm there. And part of that is first of all, you select genetic traits for bees that are not aggressive that's number one.

So if a hive does become aggressive, you go find the queen, you dispatch her and you replace her with a queen with gentle genetics. That's number one. Number two is always use at least a little bit of smoke. Number three is make sure you're calm and move slowly and carefully when you handle the bees. And then of course, last but not least is make sure you're in your bees on a fairly regular basis.

Even though a honeybee in the peak season, will only live for six weeks, they do seem to get to know you. I mean, I've seen it over and over again. When I work someone else's bees with them or when somebody comes and helps with mine, they tend to get a little more angry with people that are not their beekeeper. And so whether that's something they know or something that changes in our behavior, I'm not entirely sure, but it it's intriguing nonetheless.

Host: Okay. Medical benefits. What are they when it comes to bees and honey?

Dr. Scoggins: Oh, sure. Yeah. A lot written about this. So I'm, I'm gonna pop some people's bubbles here probably, and you know, more research to disprove this. But at this point when you buy pollen harvested from honeybee hives, if that's not carefully stored in a refrigerator or preferably a freezer, it does not have a very stable shelf life.

So the proteins in the pollen will break down over time and not really provide you much in the way of allergy benefits. The other thing to know is that pollen collected by honeybees is pollinator pollinated pollen. Okay. You can think about that one. That's a lot of pollens in a row. Sorry about that.

Host: Sounds like a tongue twister.

Dr. Scoggins: Yes. And it kind of is, that's why I had to slow down. Yeah. but it's not the airborne pollen that you're allergic to that is found in beehives except by accident. And I'll tell you what I mean. So the pollen gathered by honeybees is not likely what you're allergic to. On the other hand, the pollen that blows through the air gets stuck to those little fine hair fibers that line the honeybee from its eyes, all the way to its to the back of its abdomen.

Okay. So that as that honey sticks, it will accidentally make its way into the honey. So when you eat honey, you're getting some of that airborne pollen that will provide you that allergy boosting benefit, at least in theory. Now studies have gone back and forth on how effective that is, but I have lots of people around here that swear by it.

Host: And air filled with the smell of bees can actually boost someone's immune system and improve breathing, right?

Dr. Scoggins: You know, I've heard that. I'm not aware of any major studies that back that up, but I know it's a growing movement that people can literally breathe from a tube connected to a bee hive and in some sense it does make sense to me. You know, there, you know, bees communicate by pheromones.

So there's an, there's a huge number of pheromones existent within a beehive at any given time. And bees actually do pretty hard work, cleaning the air inside the hive in a variety of ways. So it makes sense that there, there may be some benefit.

Host: And speaking of studies and benefits, I also read that beekeeping can help reduce stress and help with depression, no?

Dr. Scoggins: Yes. Very much so, unless of course, you're one of the unfortunate victims of the, you know, 40 to 50% hive loss over winter every year, then it's a little depressing in the spring when you come out and find a hive of dead honeybees. But to successfully keep bees and to have them come out of winter; yeah, I can't think of any more, self-confidence boost than that, frankly, because it's not an easy chore these days. And I'm happy to elaborate if you'd like.

Host: Well, I think what interests me that you just mentioned, doc is you mentioned unfortunately, sometimes the bees dying and then the hive of is gone. Right. But how long do bees typically live and how do you keep them alive?

Dr. Scoggins: Yeah. Great question. So there's a few things you need to do. And that's why being a beekeeper, as opposed to what I like to refer to as a bee haver, that's why that's so important. So people who are bee havers just have a hive sitting in the backyard that they never work with. If we're going to keep them in a man-made box, I appreciated your definition in the intro, but if you're going to keep them in a man-made box, there are some problems that they will inevitably face.

And it's up to us to recognize those early and deal with them, which is why I think beekeeping and medicine fit nicely together because you're looking at taking some preventative steps before you recognize problems. And you're looking at taking some, some treatment steps when you do recognize them. There's a number of diseases that can run through a hive and they range from viral to fungal, to bacterial and being able to recognize them, and in some cases, even test for them is tremendously useful. You have to make sure that your queens are functioning well, and a queen will, will have a laying lifespan of two to three years.

And if we don't recognize that she's starting to fail, the bees certainly will deal with it themselves. That's how they handle it in the wild. We also have to make sure we're checking for little pest that lives in a beehive called Varroa mite and these little mites live on honeybees and basically suck their blood for lack of a better word.

And spread a tremendous number of diseases. So stay on top of mites and in many cases needing to treat at least once a year is essential to keeping those bees alive. And then of course, going into winter, you gotta make sure they have plenty of food stores.

Host: You mentioned doctor that if a queen bee starts to fade in her performance, so to speak, that the other bees deal with it, quote unquote in their own way. What do we mean by that?

Dr. Scoggins: Well, you know, nature's cruel. And, if a queen stops laying effectively than her pheromone level does drop, and the bees are acutely sensitive to that because that's the entire future of the colony note, that there can be no replacement generations of bees that are only living six weeks without a well-functioning queen.

So if that pheromone level starts to drop, then they secretly start to raise up a replacement queen. When that queen is born, the old one is dispatched so to speak and the new queen takes her place.

Host: Wow. Well, I think many of us are surprised to hear that. So the lesson there is even the queen bee can be overthrown huh?

Dr. Scoggins: Indeed, indeed. And it's really is a big question as to who's in charge in a hive. You know, we, we ascribe, you know, we, we take the word queen in that she's in charge of that hive, but the roles are so shared and there's so much overlap between worker bees and nurse bees and guard bees, and even the queen bee, that it really is a shared governance, in every sense of the word and a single bee will not live very long. So they rely on the colony. Everything is in service of the colony.

Host: Boy the way you described those colonies and the job breakdown, if only our society worked in as orderly a fashion. Right? Let me ask you a couple of other things, certainly can't end this interview without this question. What do you do with the honey?

Dr. Scoggins: Oh, great question. Well I keep plenty for my family's use. And then in my case I started a little beekeeping business. Now my aim is not so much to sell honey. Although I do that to help support the business and support the hives. But for me, I do bottle it and sell it, but the aim of my business is to support backyard beekeepers.

So I'm, trying to position myself to be the go-to teacher and coach, as well as the supplier of beekeeping equipment and honeybees, in any given season. I also started raising queens the last couple of years. So I raise and provide queens, for local beekeepers. So that's my aim.

Host: Well, if you want to be the go-to guide doc, you're certainly mine if I hear of anyone that wants to get involved in this, I'm going right to you because afterall, I don't know anybody else that does this. Now you're a pediatrician, on a serious note. You're a pediatrician by trade, as we said at the top. So in closing here, if someone listening or perhaps someone they know they think wants to get involved, wants to get started with beekeeping; how do you start? And when is a good age? I would imagine we don't want little kids getting involved in this, except maybe from a distance, just watching an adult, right?

Dr. Scoggins: Yes. Although I have several teenagers that are very interested and, and a few that come out and help me on a regular basis. So I think, you know, a lot of families keep bees. You know, my boys are nine and 12 and they're sort of fleetingly interested at this point, but I'm going to keep working on it.

So I think you could, with the proper supervision, I think you could involve kids probably as young as seven or eight, to be honest. And it's something they can kind of learning about and reading and much like medicine, you can go down the rabbit hole as far as you want. Like I said, we've been studying bees in some form or fashion for 3000 years, give or take probably longer, but as far as recorded history and we know a lot about honeybees and how much their success is tied to ours. Yeah, I don't think it's, I don't think it's ever too early with the proper supervision and guidance.

Host: Okay. Interesting. By the way, doc, you know, you mentioned they can even start at seven or eight. Hey, anything to get them away from those video games for a few hours, right?

Dr. Scoggins: Oh, well said, yes.

Host: Thank you. Folks, we trust you're now more familiar with the sweet hobby of beekeeping, Dr. Brad Scoggins. Very interesting stuff. Thanks so much.

Dr. Scoggins: Hey, thank you Joey was wonderful.

Host: Same here and to schedule an appointment for your child or to contact Dr. Scoggins, when he's got some free time to talk beekeeping, please do call San Juan Health Partners Pediatrics at 505-609-6705 6705 0 5 6 0 9 6 700. If you found this podcast helpful, please do share it on your social. And thanks again for listening to Celebrate Health, a podcast sponsored by San Juan Regional Medical Center.

Hoping your health is good health. I'm Joey Wahler.