Yappy: "This will get me excommunicated from the bee community!"

Firefighter by day, bee-whisperer by everything else — Yappy BeeMan joins the show fresh off a job (complete with a couple of fresh stings) to spill 15 years of beekeeping wisdom, chaos, and comedy.

Yappy tells the wild story of how one shaky cell-phone video — where he caught a queen bare-handed, mid-recording, with nowhere to put her — rocketed his channel from 5,000 subscribers to a million views practically overnight.

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From there, things get delightfully spicy: he makes the case for treating bees "like ladies" (suit optional), roasts the beekeepers who bust up cinder block basements to "save" $150 worth of bees, and explains why lazy trap-outs are basically bee purgatory.

The grand finale? Two jaw-dropping removals from a 150-year-old farmhouse — one wall hiding a 75-year-old colony, the other a 45-year-old honey vault with a jaw-dropping 100 gallons inside.

Oh, and before all that — the host crunches this year's colony loss numbers. The bees are doing a little better, but as one industry leader puts it, that's still less "victory lap" and more "crisis in slow motion."

Buckle up, beekeepers — it's a big one.

VIDEO VERSION

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Eric@BeeLoveBeekeeping.com

Yappy Beeman: https://swarmremover.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@YappyBeeman

Before getting into the honey of it all, host Eric riffs on a string of bizarre highway mishaps — rolled-over bee trucks, a tofu spill, flaming ribeyes — proving that 2026 is just a weird year for cargo.

Then the real magic begins: mechanical-engineer-turned-beekeeper Bill Hesbach drops some serious hive-mind wisdom on condensing hives, the practice of letting bees manage their own internal climate instead of beekeepers cranking up the ventilation.

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Turns out our buzzy friends are basically tiny thermodynamics geniuses — using CO2 to chill their metabolism, recycling latent heat from condensation, and even running their own swamp coolers in summer. Who knew beekeeping came with a side of physics class?

The conversation gets delightfully nerdy (volcano-buried hives! snow as insulation! queens partying in CO2 chambers!) before Bill explains how to DIY your own insulated hive sleeve — and why a "quilt box" might be sabotaging your bees without you knowing it.

Things wrap up with two classic wild & crazy beekeeper tales: a swarm-catching fiasco involving mistaken identity (turns out bees are sneaky little ninjas) and a jungle honey-hunt in Thailand that ends with giant Apis dorsata bees chasing panicked undergrads through snake-infested streams. Equal parts science lecture and adventure story — this one's a hive worth diving into.

VIDEO VERSION

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Mann Lake discount code: MLBEELOVE10 for $10 off your next order.

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Eric@BeeLoveBeekeeping.com

Bill: https://www.wingdancehoney.com/

Host Eric Bennett, travels across the pond to Cornwall, England, for a fascinating conversation with Molly Earl, full-time beekeeper and founder of Bees Off and The Rescued Bee.

Molly specializes in live bee removals — rescuing honeybee colonies from chimneys, walls, flat roofs, and other structures — and has grown what started as a two-hive hobby into an operation managing roughly 300 beehives across mid-Cornwall.

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The conversation covers her techniques, tools, the Cornwall beekeeping season, and pest management. Plus, Molly shares a couple of wild & crazy, memorable beekeeping stories that you won't want to miss... including how the pant leg of her beekeeping suit caught on fire!

Video Version of This Episode

Special thanks to our presenting sponsor, Mann Lake! https://www.mannlakeltd.com/

Mann Lake discount code: MLBEELOVE10 for $10 off your next order.

Follow Us: https://www.beelovebeekeeping.com/follow/

https://www.beelovebeekeeping.com/

Eric@BeeLoveBeekeeping.com

The Honeycomb Conjecture: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004540010071

Molly Earl: https://beesoff.co.uk/