Hands, Feet, and Beekeeping

 I went to a beekeeper this last week. He is the President of the Cache Valley Beekeeper Association. I last minute brought my roommate, and so he had to last minute go get him a bee-suit. He came in a few minutes later than expected, hauling in his black Nissan pickup in to his driveway.

Lincoln, my roommate has never seen a beehive. I think too many people have not seen a beehive, inside or out. It is a niche hobby, but the one hobby that underwrites the whole of agricultural activity in the world. Without pollination, over a third of food species in the United States would not be possible.

Lincoln, holding a frame from a beehive for the first time in his life!

    While I was helping with the hive, Lincoln was standing back a few yards away. Then he began rapidly bending his neck so he could hit the bee that was crawling around his hood up near his head. It did not work. The bee crawled into his outer ear and stung him on the inside. He was in a lot of pain. It was not a great way to introduce my friend to the wonders of beekeeping. But it made me start thinking about migrant beekeepers: the hardy, often Mexican migrants who come to Utah, pick up a job and a beekeeping suit, along with some training, and move to California's Central Valley to pollinate over a third of our agricultural produce. They go back and forth six months out of the year, tweaking their backs as they move supers, deal with bee stings, deal with the increasing heat costs of climate change in the white suits that dominate the industry, deal with people who just go to Costco and don't even think twice about what it means to be a beekeeper. 

    The constant work to keep varroa mites at bay, the constant search for pesticides that will kill said mites, while keeping the honey safe, the chance of killing the queen everytime you lift a super and put it down, the new chance of Asian giant hornets wiping out your hive when you are gone for a lunch break, are all things that make beekeepers worry. They breed ancient dynasties of gentle honeybees, such as the Carniolan bees from Slovenia with Africanized bees to make them more resistant to the effects of colony collapse disorder (CCD), but increase their basal level of aggression, making them more unsafe around children. It is a difficult task, and let's not even go into profit margins.

Me holding a frame

We had a fun time, checking out the bees. It certainly gave us an adrenaline rush having all the buzzing bees around us.

A bee stinger left in my leather glove.

Something that came to mind as I thought of the migrant beekeeper's ever increasing job difficulty, especially as temperatures rise, is the need to keep them cool. And this is a trouble for all essential workers.

One way to solve this is through robotics, but even the best robots with the best AI systems can't pick like a human yet. Another is through reducing water consumption, which is good until you realize that until those perfect robots are invented, we will still need to have workers in the fields and apiaries to do good work. I think I have found a partial solution. A sergeant in the Air Force took a Camelbak and added a pump filled with cold water to keep soldiers cool in the heat of the Middle East, under their body armor. The Department of Defense likes to license out innovative technologies like this so they can go out into the market, and rebound back to the DoD in a more refined form. Here is the technology and the licensing information. Find an MBA. Find a manufacturing engineer. Bring it to the masses.

If I was an enterprising young technologist, looking to enable and increase climate resilience, and give back to the working class that kept us alive through the pandemic in hospitals, grocery stores, warehouses, construction sites, farms, utilities, and apiaries, I would try to mass produce this device for those fields. Have you ever tried to roof a house in 90 degree heat? Try 110 degrees, where the shade isn't even cool. Show them that the technocracy has some common sense, and can listen to their needs instead of coming up with a new software, intrusive regulation, or some solution that defies the realities of real-world implementation. Make it work for roofers, farmers, migrant workers, beekeepers, nurses, and warehouse workers who risked their lives for us. Show them the way to unity and common sense runs through people solving problems for both sides of the political aisle. Actively listen to their needs, they who produce for us the very things we take for granted. The drought in the Colorado River Basin will lead to great inflation and increased food prices in the Intermountain West because people can't work in these conditions. Help them! Use your hands, your feet, your brain and your mouth to make the toiling in the fields, not to lighten their burden---you college educated people rarely can do that---but "ease the ^aburdens which are put upon [their] shoulders, that even [they] cannot feel them upon [their] backs." Enable them to do the great and difficult tasks they are called to do so that we don't starve to death because we were too assured of our ability to automate everything we touch.