Wanna Save The Bees? Fred Dunne Gives His Take!

I am here at NAB with the living legend, Fred Dunn, and we're just going to have a chat about these. So Fred, thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me, old man.

How's it going?

I don't know about the living legend part, but yeah, it's great to see you here and I'm glad you came so far.

Yeah, yeah. It seemed like a slightly easier trip this time around. I don't know, it didn't take quite as long, but it's crazy. In America, people drive long distances. How long did it take you to get here?

It took us about 8 hours, which is not bad considering that where I live, sometimes I'm in a snowbelt area.

Okay.

I don't know if your viewers know what that means, but we're in competition annually for the largest snowfall.

Oh, wow.

And so we end up with a little over 100 inches of snow. And they have the snow—

Like over a long period?

Through winter.

Okay.

So the entire winter.

Not just at once?

Not at once, no. And if they did that at once, it would paralyze everything, which often happens. But we get what's called lake effect snow. And so sometimes you could spend the most time on a long trip right there trying to get out of that area. But once we head south, we're okay. And I don't know if you recall last year, people left here and drove into a snowstorm and a lot of people had their flights were delayed and cancelled.

Do you recall that? I wasn't aware of that actually, because I came 2024. I came and there wasn't— it wasn't too bad. But it's only because we just had a bit of a snow event in the UK.

Oh, you weren't here last year?

No, 2024 I was here.

Oh, that's interesting. It seems like it was just—

It goes so quickly, doesn't it? It's like, it feels like yesterday that I was here and it was 2 years ago. But we just had some snow at home. We had about 8 inches, which was like, for us, is quite A lot in the UK. If we get this much, it grinds to a halt. It just gets like crazy.

Yeah, but the drive is nice. So I would much rather drive and see the country than get in a plane and see it from the air.

Well, yeah, and 8 hours. Like, it took us to fly over was 9 hours. So it's— I'm just always amazed that people in the US, they— like I said to Todd outside, he said— I think you might know Todd. He's up there somewhere. And he was saying 17 hours it took to drive down. But that's just like normal, isn't it, in America?

Yeah.

Like a full day.

Well, if you enjoy driving, that's kind of a pastime for a lot of people.

And thanks to Audible.

Audiobooks.

Is that what you like listening to?

Oh, yeah.

Go on, what's on your Audible books at the moment?

On our way here, we listened to The Mason Bee Revolution. So we're talking about the value of diversifying for pollinators. And of course, maintenance of the landscape, trying to keep it as natural as possible and keep the chemicals out.

Awesome. And you listen to that together, do you?

Yeah, my wife listens halfway. She's on her phone most of the time. But so we're trying to push beekeepers in our area, which is the northeastern part of the and Pennsylvania specifically, we try to get them to make use of the green spaces under their control. And honeybees, there's quite a bit of pushback because they're non-native.

Yep.

Often we're concentrating a lot of honeybees in one area and exhausting resources, and the perception is bigger than the reality. So if we can get beekeepers to diversify and maybe take care of some mason bees and other solitary bee species, then you're friendlier to the environment and the optics are better when other people look at your operation and say, oh, look at all these Bee houses that are for mason bees.

Oh, Fred, I absolutely love that. We do something very, very similar and we're pushing towards that at the moment. And the one that I get a lot, I get people ringing me up and they say like, I don't really know what I'm doing yet. I just, I want to save the bees.

Sure.

So can I buy a nuc from you? And I always say, that's not what you— if you want to save the bees, yeah, go into your garden and you can just like drill some holes into some wood where it gets the sun, little mason bee cocoons, and you can just do something.

Absolutely. Oh yeah.

Any hassle at all. Yeah, it's so easy, isn't it?

And it's very— it's a passive way to succeed in pollinating. And there's a push, of course, to try to commercialize. And people don't even realize that there are solitary bee commercial operations already here in the US.

Like millions of cocoons.

There are. And they transport them at just the right time so that they emerge at just the right time. The males come out first, the females come out next. And bee by bee, they're more efficient pollinators than the honeybee. But the advantage, of course, is we put out hundreds of thousands of honeybees in an environment. And, but the mason bees fly colder, fly longer, and bee by bee access more plants. And of course there are species that honeybees don't even pollinate, which they do. So honeybees, pollinator, they are floral constant. So when you've got bees that are after a specific floral variety, Yeah. It's not like the bumblebee that goes from one plant species to another all in the same flight. So the native bees are much better Diversified pollinators, but it's also why the honeybee is so valuable because they pollinate and they don't cross-pollinate.

Yeah.

So it's very interesting.

They just stick on one kind of like plant.

Yeah, yeah, very interesting.

I really like mason bees. So I put my first ones in about a year ago now, and I'll never forget putting them in and kind of like putting them down to the tube and trying to— someone told me you had to put them the right way, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure that you have to, but I remember them coming out and that emergence because they kind of like cap them all over. And they're super fluffy, aren't they?

Yeah.

Like the fluffiest bees I've ever seen.

And big eyes, so they have a high cuteness factor.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you look at them. And for people who want to save the bees, that's pretty cool, isn't it?

Oh yeah.

If you've got bees that are not going to sting.

And actually, that's a very good response. We don't want more bee— I personally don't want more beekeepers. Now, if you come up and— because just like you, people come up and want to know, hey, I want to start with bees. I have a grandson who's 6. How much money can I make from beekeeping? You're not my guy.

No, you don't want that.

So I'm fascinated in bees and I wanna see what they're like and I wanna see their life and I wanna learn more about 'em. How do I keep a beehive? That's the person I wanna talk to.

Yeah.

So, but mason bees are very passive. You could give a mason bee house to a friend who's a gardener and then it's kind of a segue to maybe a bigger commitment later to another type of beehive 'cause we're not gonna get honey from those. And so there are advantages to both. And I think it's a great opportunity if we can showcase both and have experience with both.

Oh, definitely.

And then, yeah, and not everyone should be keeping bees, but everyone should be environmentally conscientious.

100%. And it's interesting, and Zainab will back me up here. So in my main apiary is in a coniferous woodland.

Okay.

So back in just after the First World War, it was heather moorland. And then they built, like they've just planted loads of conifers for the war effort. So we are in this forest now, which is a big coniferous forest, which is quite dead. It's very quiet and very eerie. There's not a huge amount of wildlife there because it's so kind of like overgrown with all of these So the, the landowner is trying to rewild it, and what he's doing— and he's been given licenses— they want him to take down the coniferous trees and leave behind like the deciduous ones. So we've got beeches and oaks and everything. And then they started to do it, and we've got this bluebell glade starting to come up now, and you can like hear the life coming back in just because we're taking out the conifers and letting the light back in.

Sure. Oh yeah, that undergrowth.

So what I want to do is start putting in place these habitats, and not to force it too much, but just nice natural habitats where if animals want to come or insects want to come, they've got somewhere to to kind of go and live. So that is the plan, and we're gonna document that on our YouTube channel.

Oh, that's great. It's gonna be worth following. Absolutely. Yeah.

Pretty cool, wouldn't it?

I'm actually a poultry technician with the Department of Ag. So started with chickens at the turn of the century. And I wanted to start with bees earlier, but my wife was not happy about the bees.

No.

So.

Okay, Fred, I can see you coming in.

We're gonna have to wrap it up.

Thank you so much for doing this.

It's all right. Pleasure.