and I bought a house just 10 minutes
north of here and we were first-time
homebuyers and we were so excited for
spring when move-in day finally came
we just couldn’t wait we were so excited
we were much less excited when on
arriving at the house we discovered that
it was already occupied by a colony of
honeybees living in the wall in between
the first and second story we really
were it was the literal example of buyer
beware and we weren’t really sure what
to do
they were amazing to watch with balls of
pollen on their legs and they never once
tried to sting us but at the same time
we didn’t want hundreds of pounds of
honey accumulating in our kitchen
ceiling and so I’m a nature lover but my
husband Matt he takes things to the
extreme he’ll go to extreme lengths to
rescue injured Turtles injured cats
injured birds on the side of the road
he’ll shoo a spider away before I can
get a fight fly swatter so I shouldn’t
have been surprised when one morning he
announced today’s the day I’m gonna get
the bees out of the house are you out of
your mind you’re gonna get stung
undeterred I watched him put on a rubber
rain suit we weren’t beekeepers at the
time wrap a towel around his head and
put on a hat and climb a ladder and
proceeded to take row after row of
honeycomb out of our wall meanwhile I
have a smouldering stick and I’m running
back and forth because we had a vague
sense that smoke calms bees down this
was the first time that we asked
ourselves the question how to save the
honeybees and I had no idea that that
question would redefine the better part
of the next decade but I’m jumping ahead
so Matt took all this comb and
put the honeycomb in a cabinet with all
of the bees and we put this cabinet in
the woods and we figured that that would
be the end of our a honeybee adventure
and then a few days few weeks later
we’re sitting in the back yard and an
enormous swarm of honeybees flies over
our garage and lands on the same spot on
our house where the previous bees lived
now most people when they see this
they’re either scared or terrified but I
ran and grabbed the video camera and
stood there in what I can only describe
as giddy awe as thousands of bees went
back into my house this is the second
time that we asked ourselves the
question how to save the bees now this
time we did what we probably should have
done the first time and we called a
beekeeper who came out and she helped us
find the Queen and we put the Queen in
the box and we watched as all of the
honey bees poured out of our wall and
went into the Beehive it was the closest
thing to magic I had ever seen in my
life
and I was hooked so now here we were two
beekeepers with two beehives and no
beekeeping experience
and we pretty much left them alone for
that summer partly because we had no
idea what we were doing and also because
we figured they’d had enough and winter
came and we were excited to see how they
were doing in this in the in the spring
and when we went to check on them both
but we were hooked and so we started
again this time the way most people get
into beekeeping and we bought two
beehives and all of the proper equipment
and started learning everything we could
about how to care for them we read books
we took courses we watched videos we
joined beat clubs and we discovered that
our challenge keeping our honeybees
alive wasn’t unique it was a widespread
problem and we wanted to help so now we
asked ourselves – for the third time how
to save the honeybees well what we knew
how to do in the beginning was take bees
out of places where they didn’t belong
so that’s what we did over the course of
a few summers and our spare time and on
weekends we both had full-time jobs we
ran around and we took bees out of all
sorts of places out of walls out of
trees out of chimneys and it felt really
great we were helping people we were
rescuing these bees from extermination
and our beer it was growing but I was
struggling with the scale so over the
course of a summer we’d maybe rescue ten
honeybee colonies it was really
insignificant many many many honeybee
colonies died about nowadays in Ontario
about 30 percent of colonies died over
the winter twenty-five to thirty five
percent that’s up from what used to be
about 15 percent we’ve had winters with
50 percent mortality rates over the
winters that’s 50% of all colonies in
Ontario dime last year the United States
saw a mortality rate of 50 percent now
so we started asking ourselves this
question again
and what a lot of people don’t realize
is that a big part of the bee business
isn’t about honey at all
it’s about pollination which is what
this little bee is doing here
bees travel from one flower to another
spreading pollen around and this
transforms a flower into a fruit or a
vegetable every year millions of
colonies of honeybees are put on
transport trucks and shipped to
pollinate our crops now I use almonds as
the example not to demonize almonds but
because they’re it’s a nice example
almonds are grown in California in an
absolutely enormous monoculture it’s
eight hundred thousand acres which is
about the equivalent of six hundred
thousand football fields it would take
you seven hours to drive across it
because there’s nothing but almonds
there there’s a beautiful period of
bloom for two weeks in February but the
rest of the time there aren’t any
flowers so the native pollinators the
bumble bees and the butterflies aren’t
there to do the work of pollination so
to compensate honey bees are put on
transport trucks and shipped to
California
80% of all the honeybee colonies in the
United States and while they’re there
they can transmit diseases between each
other they’re exposed to all kinds of
chemicals sprayed on the trees and if it
weren’t bad enough it doesn’t end in
California from there they’re shipped to
pollinate all sorts of things apples
oranges watermelons one-third of the
food that we eat it’s here in Canada as
well
blueberries canola apples and so we
started wondering if there might be a
different way to keep bees and around
the same time we were starting to wonder
could we do this for a living and so we
started a honey company with the idea
that if we could spread our bee hives
out and put them in places where they
wouldn’t be exposed to agricultural
pesticides like backyards and rooftops
and spread them apart so that they
couldn’t transmit diseases between each
other
and teach people about beekeeping at the
same time because there’s only 16% as
many beekeepers today as there were in
1946 that this would be a really great
way to help and so that’s what we did
and our very first client was actually
this hotel the Brook Street and our
beehive is on the roof and today we have
about 200 beehives in all sorts of
different spots across the city on
rooftops and in backyards but what I
didn’t expect is that these honeybees
over the course of a few years would
completely redesign our lives we sold
our house and moved to an urban farm we
abandoned our careers and we found
ourselves surrounded by a whole
community of people who loved the same
thing we do but most of all we were
transformed from passive consumers to
active producers and it’s the best
feeling in the world but I was still
struggling with this problem of scale
and feeling fairly insignificant in the
big picture our 200 beehives are really
just a drop in the bucket and so I
started looking at this problem of
honeybee losses again now if you haven’t
seen it dr. Marla Spivak gives an
absolutely fantastic TED talk on why
bees are disappearing so I’m not going
to go on in length at length but in
short it comes down to four things
monoculture farming and migratory
beekeeping which I’ve already told told
you about the global spread of parasites
and diseases in particular one called
varroa destructor which is a parasite
that decimates honeybee colonies and
actually jumped species from one type of
bee to honey bees in the 80s pesticides
that are absolutely everywhere in
particular a class called neonicotinoid
pesticides and lack of flowers because
we’ve paved paradise we’re redesigning
the landscape
now because there’s no single cause no
one smoking gun’ there’s an incredible
amount of finger-pointing going on and
it can be incredibly difficult to know
where to help you have beekeepers
telling farmers not to spray you have
chemical companies telling beekeepers to
control for varroa you have
environmental groups telling governments
to ban neonics
and the rest of us are told to plant a
few flowers but when I looked at this
again these four things are not
independent of each other you can’t fix
one and the problem goes away they’re
all related to the way we grow our food
we don’t have a big honeybee problem we
have a big agriculture problem honeybees
are the symptom of the disease in the
same way that fish dying in river ways
polluted with too much nitrogen
fertilizer that causes toxic algae
blooms are a symptom of the disease in
the same way the deforestation drought
flooding and climate change are symptoms
of the disease the way we grow our food
is at the heart of the matter
it’s the agricultural system and the
system demands that farmers clear-cut
meadows to plant single types of crops
it in which in turn demands that the
landscape is soaked in agricultural
pesticides which in turn demands that
honeybees are shipped on transports
which in turn facilitates the spread of
diseases the system demands all these
things because we demand it because we
eat food and I don’t know anybody who’s
so here I was naively looking for the
big solution to our big honeybee problem
and I found myself looking at a problem
so big that it’s an it’s impossible how
can two people possibly imagine to
redesign an agricultural system people
would still ask me how to save the
honeybees and I couldn’t bear the answer
I I’d smile and say
plant flowers but my answer had actually
become we can’t save the honeybees but
then something remarkable happened I
remembered something so small about bees
that it changed my entire perspective on
the problem and may change entirely
possible I was working in the bee yard
looking at frame after frame of
honeybees and I remembered that a
honeybee in her lifetime makes only 1/12
of a teaspoon of honey it’s nothing it’s
completely insignificant but the colony
has a big problem it needs to make at
least a hundred pounds of honey to make
it through the Canadian winter now the
honeybees she doesn’t look at this
problem and say it’s impossible she gets
to work and she and her sisters
collectively make not only what they
need to survive the winter but two times
three times that amount but the most
remarkable thing isn’t that she does the
work it’s that she doesn’t even do it
for herself
she won’t live to see the winter she
only lives six to eight weeks
she’s doing it for her sisters who will
be born in the fall and will take the
colony through to the next season her
1/12 of a teaspoon counts this one small
fact became the most empowering
realization of my entire life
I am insignificant but my 1/12 of a
teaspoon counts so if I want to redesign
an agricultural system overgrow it that
I need to grow food and that’s what
we’re doing we’re gonna grow as much
food as we can for our family and if
like the honeybees we have an extra to
share then that’s a bonus and now
everywhere I look I see opportunity to
grow food on rooftops and backyards in
schoolyards on corporate campuses
there’s lawn everywhere and we have
access
two more tools and better technology and
more shared knowledge than our
great-grandparents ever have and now I
just need to ask millions of people to
do the same thing at first it seemed
ridiculous
how can one tiny insignificant person do
that but it turns out that the honeybees
have an answer for us here too and it
comes back to that swarm of bees that
landed on my house in the first place
honeybees are social insects they live
in a colony of about 50,000 bees and
it’s not a monarchy ruled by the Queen
decisions are made by consensus and they
are masters of mass movements and so how
do they do that
well I’ve told you about the winter and
the struggle to get through it but
there’s another period in the honeybee
colonies life cycle and it happens in
the spring when everything is beautiful
and in bloom and there’s plenty to eat
at this time of the year the honeybees
bring in so much nectar that they fill
every single cell of honeycomb full and
the Queen runs out of space to lay eggs
well this triggers something amazing in
the colony they start to raise a new
queen and then one sunny afternoon
usually in June half of the bees pour
out of the hive all at once and they
land in a ball in a tree now this is a
precarious situation they can’t stay
where they are they can’t go back to
where they came from and they can’t stay
where they are because it won’t be very
long before a June thunderstorm rolls
through and wipes them out and so they
need to make a decision they need to
find somewhere to live so how do they do
that well most of the honeybees they
stay right where they are but a handful
are sent out as Scouts and they go off
in all directions looking for a new
place to live and so the honeybee she
flies off and she finds maybe a hollow
tree or in my case the side of my house
and she says that this is great and so
she flies back to the colony and she’s
going to tell the bees what she found
and
gonna do it not with words but she’s
gonna do a waggle dance and she’s gonna
move her body and she’s gonna go around
and a figure eight and the direction of
her waggle is gonna tell the bees where
this spot is and the excitedness of her
waggle is gonna tell them how great it
is and she’ll convince maybe a handful
of bees to go with her and they’ll fly
off and they’ll check it out and they’ll
agree and they fly back and then pretty
soon over the course of a few hours at
most a day the whole colony is waggling
it is visibly shaking you can see it and
then all it said all of a sudden the
swarm is triggered and like magic it
lifts off in this swirling cloud of
chaos and it flies off to the single
place that that single be found and so
that’s what I’m here to do
I’m here to waggle I’m here to ask as
many of you as I can to grow food in the
hope that you will and that guilt in
turn waggle I’m here to remind you that
you’re 1/12 of a teaspoon counts today
when you ask me how to save the
honeybees I ask you to grow food over
grow the system and waggle and maybe
with a little magic we can trigger a
swarm thank you
[Applause] [Music]