Terrestrials 09. The Crystal Ball: Giant Honeybees Who Predict the Future
The honeybee. The ever-important pollinator for our plants is disappearing. Some call it the silence of the bees, others call it colony collapse disorder. Dr. Sammy Ramsey, our official bug correspondent, wondered, could it be due to parasites? And if so, how do we catch all of them? This question takes Dr. Sammy to the heart of a jungle in Bangladesh to look for overlooked honeybees impervious to parasites. The only problem? He can't find them. With help from a local guide named Babulall, he learns how the most overlooked bees could possibly save all the honey bees in the world. Plus, they have some killer dance moves.
Big special thanks this episode to Babulall Munda and Rubaiyat Mansur Mowgli, both of whom, by the way, will be credited on any scientific papers that come out of the work they did with Dr. Sammy in Bangladesh.
Check out the making of this episode! Photos by Shin Arunrugstichai.
Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Alan Goffinski, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Joe Plourde and Lulu Miller, with help from Sammy Ramsey, Rico Hernandez, Amanda Gann, Madison Sankovitz, Chris Borke, and Shin Arunrugstichai.
The Terrestrials team also includes Ana González, Tanya Chawla, Sarah Sandbach, and Valentina Powers, with fact-checking by Diane Kelly. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Transcription by Caleb Codding.
Our advisors are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Andy J. Pizza, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, Liza Demby, Princess Daazhraii Johnson and Tara Welty.
Learn more about storytellers, listen to music, and dig deeper into the stories you hear on Terrestrials with activities you can do at home or in the classroom on our website, Terrestrialspodcast.org.
Badger us on social media: @radiolab and #TerrestrialsPodcast or by emailing us at terrestrials@wnyc.org.
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Lulu Miller: Three, two, one.
(Background music winds up.)
Sammy Ramsey: Imagine your eyeballs grow lots of hair.
(Hairs grow, one by one: Zip! Zwip!)
Sammy: And you suddenly get really good at math.
(Computers beep and blip as they calculate lots of math really, really fast.)
Sammy: Trigonometry in particular.
Lulu: (Explaining.) It's the study of angles, triangles, and stuff.
Sammy: But instead of showing off that math with a pen and paper …
(The computer sounds fade out.)
Lulu: … You show it off–
Sammy: –By dancing!
(Funky dance music plays as Sammy sings and Lulu chuckles gently.)
Sammy: You shake it to the left–ayy!–you shake it to the right–ayy!–then you waggle and point your body in the perfect angle to show your siblings how to find … flowers!
(The music changes, slow and misty and mysterious like a dream.)
Lulu: You have become …
Sammy: A honey bee.
Lulu: But not just any honey bee!
Sammy: One of the overlooked honey bees. [Echoing dramatic, suspenseful horn flares as they play underneath.] Dun, dun, dun!
(Both laugh.)
Lulu: Now is when I make you sing the theme song.
Sammy: Hmm!
(The Terrestrials theme song starts to play, loud and proud!)
Songbud Alan Goffinski: Terrestrials, Terrestrials! We are not the worst, we're the …
Sammy: (Chuckling quietly as he finishes the song.) … Bestrials.
Lulu: (Laughingly, as Sammy cracks up.) Yeah!
(A beat.)
Lulu: Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness waiting right here on earth. I am your host, Lulu Miller, joined, as always, by my songbud …
Songbud Alan: Hey hey!
Lulu: (Laughing.) Alan!
Songbud Alan: Buzzing with excitement!
Lulu: This season we are looking at creatures that are usually …
Songbud Alan and Lulu: (Together.) Overlooked! [A beat.] Shh!
Lulu: And today's very special guest is a voice you might recognize from past Terrestrials. That's right. Bug guy Sammy Ramsey has joined the Terrestrials team as our official Bug Correspondent!
(Bugs skitter by as a piano key twinkles, almost like a musical wink.)
Lulu: Hi, Sammy!
Sammy: Good to be back.
(Bees buzz as magical music envelops Lulu and Sammy.)
Lulu: So, the story Sammy has brought us today is about overlooked honey bees. Picture a bunch of bees who you might not have seen before. Some of them are huge, and some of them are tiny, and some of them are red, and some of them are shiny.
Sammy: And when their wings are moving, all of those colors seem to shift and shimmer around.
(A glimmer as you imagine the bees moving.)
Lulu: But this story is also about a superhero, of sorts, who I’m gonna call …
(The bee music gives way to a superhero theme song.)
Songbud Alan: (Echoing.) “Man Who Notices Overlooked Things!”
Lulu: Underneath his cape and tights is …
(A trumpet blares a fanfare to signal the entrance of a very important, very special superhero.)
Lulu: … Sammy. It’s Sammy.
Lulu: (Whispers, as an aside.) Sammy, are you okay with me calling you “Man Who Notices Overlooked Things”?
Sammy: Um, yes?
(Both laugh.)
Lulu: He’s a good sport.
(Fwip!)
Lulu: And I’m calling him “Man Who Notices Overlooked Things” because …
Sammy: My eye is drawn to things that people don't pay a lot of attention to.
(Quick, soft piano music plays as Lulu explains Sammy’s career.)
Lulu: In his science–his life, really–he’s learned again and again that when you zero in on the things no one’s paying attention to …
Sammy: … You find the discoveries.
Lulu: Just watch!
(Bees buzz to signal that we are going back in time.)
Lulu: The year is 2006. And farmers all over the U.S. are opening their beehives to find them [A beat as the buzzing bees disappear.] empty.
Sammy: It's weird to not hear that characteristic bzz.
(A didgeridoo emulates Sammy as he mimics the bee’s sound.)
Sammy: Some folks have referred to it as the “Silence of the Bees.”
Lulu: Oof!
(A quiet moment.)
Lulu: Others referred to it as Colony Collapse Disorder, and it was really scary, because honey bees, of course, are …
Sammy: Pollinators!
(Hopeful, uptempo music.)
Lulu: Which means, as they drink from flowers, they spread pollen, which triggers plants to grow everything from peaches to pumpkins to cabbages to coffee to nuts and avocado and … !
(The music winds down as Lulu’s list grows longer and longer.)
Sammy: Ugh. Imagine a life with no ice cream!
Lulu: They do not pollinate cows, Sammy!
Sammy: They pollinate the food that we feed to the cows.
Lulu: Ooh!
Sammy: So a bunch of bees just disappearing is really frightening.
(Suspenseful music kicks in.)
Lulu: And this is where–
Songbud Alan: “Man Who Notices Overlooked Things”!
Lulu: –Arrives on the scene, because a few years into the “Silence of the Bees,” Sammy joins the ranks of scientists trying to figure out why the bees are disappearing.
Sammy: Is it a new disease? Is it because of pesticides? Maybe it's the cell phones!
(A cell phone rings, and then–ZAP!–electrifies the air around it.)
Lulu: (Whispered.) It was not the cell phones.
Sammy: But some people wondered, could it be due to this parasite called [Dramatically, to make it sound ominous.] Varroa destructor?
(Tchk tchk! The mites skitter and scatter around as Sammy and Lulu describe them.)
Lulu: What is this parasite? What does it look like?
Sammy: Like a weird tiny little mite. Then people thought it was feeding on the bees’ blood.
(The music fades out in time for another fanfare.)
Lulu: But–
Songbud Alan: (Over a trumpet.) “Man Who Notices Overlooked Things”!
Lulu: –Just wasn’t so sure. So he started looking closely at the stuff no one wanted to look at.
Sammy: The mite’s poop.
(A mite toot.)
Lulu: (Giggles.) And he noticed …
Sammy: It had these strange crystals.
Lulu: Ooh!
(Menacing, dark music, echoes as if in a big empty space.)
Lulu: And as he gazed deeper into those crystals, he realized the mites were feeding on the bees’ livers–
(Nom nom nom! The mites chow down. As they do, hip music kicks in.)
Lulu: (Keeping up a very fast pace.) –And so he and his sneaky team of scientists started concocting a potion they can feed it to the Varroa destructors that would make it so they can’t have babies, which means–[Lulu pauses to take a breath.]–no new adult Varroa destructors to attack the bees!
(Sammy’s “dun dun dun!” from before, complete with sound effects, returns, and the music fades out.)
Lulu: Woohoo! So that’s it? Our bees are safe now, and I can enjoy my coffee and ice cream forevermore in peace?
Sammy: (Laughing woefully.) I wish! Um, but, sadly, Varroa is not the only threat to bees.
Lulu: Oh.
(Light, open music puffs along.)
Sammy: There are a bunch of other parasites out there.
Lulu: So how do you fight those?
Sammy: Well, this brings us to the overlooked honey bees.
(Buzzing!)
Lulu: Sammy explained that all of the honey bees that exist in North America …
Sammy: … Are all one species: Apis Mellifera.
Lulu: And so much of the attention–by North American scientists, anyway–the attempts to save them, the research, has been focused on those black and yellow buzzers you know and love (or don’t love).
(A bee buzzes right at Lulu.)
Lulu: Ah! Bee!
(The bee leaves.)
Lulu: But Sammy, being–
Songbud Alan: (Over a trumpet.) “Man Who Notices Overlooked Things”!
Lulu: –He thought …
Sammy: “What if I looked at the other species of honey bees?”
(A colorful sparkle.)
Lulu: Those little red ones, and giant furry ones, and shiny black ones …
Sammy: All of them happen to live clustered in one region of the world: Southeast Asia.
Lulu: Huh, so, but … Why? Why look at them to keep our bees safe?
(Music deepens, over jungle sounds.)
Sammy: Because they have lived in forests in Thailand and India and Bangladesh for millions of years.
Lulu: Way longer than our little bees have been around!
Sammy: And over those millions of years, all kinds of parasites have popped up and attacked them.
(Wormy sounds! The roots of trees dig into the ground.)
Sammy: Meaning these overlooked bees? Their bodies are like crystal balls.
Lulu: Because they show what parasites could come attack our honey bees in the future. And if scientists can get a head start on studying those potential enemies, those parasites–well, if they do ever come to the U.S., we’ll be much better prepared to fight them off.
(The music slows down, calming over a consistent beat.)
Sammy: Bingo.
Lulu: Wow, okay! And, as I understand, you are headed out in just a few days to head deep into the jungle to try to catch some of these overlooked bees?
(Sammy laughs in response.)
Lulu: Is that right?
Sammy: So I’m leaving in seven days.
Lulu: Okay. Where are you going?
Sammy: The heart of the jungle of Bangladesh. And we’ll be staying on a houseboat, so we can go deep into the little rivers of the jungle to find some hives.
Lulu: Now, looking for, like, a hive in the wild sounds really hard–like, maybe even harder than a needle in a haystack. [Sammy chuckles heartily.] How do you find a wild beehive?
Sammy: Every single honey bee species needs to visit flowers.
(Gentle, contemplative music.)
Lulu: Hmm.
(Zhoop! A bee buzzes by.)
Sammy: And so we're going to grab bees at flowers. And then we attach a radio tracker like a little belt around their waist.
Lulu: (Laughing out loud.) Like a tiny, teensy little bee belt!
(A bee buzzes.)
Sammy: Teeny, teeny, tiny little bee belt with a little beacon that'll actually connect to our cell phones and show us on a map where they land.
(A tracking device that is actually Alan beeps.)
Lulu: Which is their hive?
Sammy: Correct.
Lulu: Wow. Go technology!
Sammy: I agree!
(Lo-fi music returns.)
Lulu: As you're getting ready for the trip, anything you are nervous about that might be lying in wait? Any snakes?
Sammy: Uh, there–there are snakes. And Bengal tigers!
(Lulu gasps.)
Sammy: They are huge.
Lulu: Woah!
Sammy: They can eat a person. So, um, if you don't hear anything back from me by the end of February–
Lulu: (Laughing deeply, but nervously.) Oh, Sammy, stop! Stop!
Sammy: –Please send a search party for me. Can you do that?
Lulu: Okay, I promise, but I don't know.
Lulu: And with that, we say goodbye to our dear, brave friend Sammy.
(Sammy laughs.)
Lulu: Good luck!
Sammy: Thank you!
Lulu: Terrestrials (and hopefully Sammy!) will be back in a moment.
(The break.)
(Buzzing. Then, music and jungle sounds mix together to create a bed of sound.)
Lulu: Terrestrials is back.
(A zipper unzips.)
Sammy: I’ve got a bright green mosquito net. I can hear all the sounds of crickets chirping.
(Water sloshes.)
Lulu: And we are on a houseboat, deep in the jungle of Bangladesh, with Sammy.
Sammy: So at night things get pretty quiet. You can hear fish moving around, jumping out of the water.
(Fish jump, water drip-drops: plink, plink, plink.)
Lulu: It’s his first night.
Sammy: Geckos here and there.
Lulu: Tomorrow, he and his team will head deep into the jungle to search for the overlooked honey bees that might hold the key to keeping our bees safe. But for now?
Sammy: I can let the sound of the waves and water just kinda rock me to sleep.
(The sound of the water washes over everything else, lulling Sammy to sleep.)
Lulu: The next morning …
Sammy: (Excitedly.) Let’s do this! Woo woo! You ready, team?
Lulu: The team assembles.
Sammy: Are you psyched?
Team Member: (Over other scientists cheering.) We’re ready! We’re psyched!
Lulu: There’s Babulall–
Sammy: (Singing excitedly, in a high pitch, in harmony with another scientist.) Babulall!
Lulu: –The jungle expert who grew up in these parts.
(Babulall speaks to the tape in Mundari.)
Lulu: Mowgli, the translator.
Mowgli: Toae / babu.
Lulu: And with radio trackers and binoculars, there’s Madison, Shin, Chris, Rico, and Amanda.
Team Member: Yeah!
Team Member: Lots of us buzzing around.
(Teammates clap and laugh as the jungle buzzes around them.)
Lulu: And the plan, as–
Songbud Alan: (As a trumpet blares.) “Man Who Notices Overlooked Things”!
Lulu: –Has designed it, is to scan the river banks from a little speedboat.
Sammy: When we’re in this speedboat, we’ve been looking from the outside of the forest in, trying to see if we can find blooming flowers.
(Motorboat sounds continue as both Sammy, in the boat, and Lulu, in the studio, keep narrating what happened next.)
Lulu: The bright orange and white star-shaped flowers of mangrove trees–which will lure the bees so Sammy can snag ‘em, pop the fancy radio gear on, and follow them to the hives.
(A beat.)
Lulu: So they look.
Sammy: Hmm.
Lulu: And they look.
(More motorboat sounds.)
Sammy: Hmm.
Lulu: And they see …
(Team members call out what they see: “Otters!” “Wild boar!” “Crabs!”. The motorboat sounds fade out.)
Lulu: But, uh, no flowers.
Sammy: (Drawing the word out, as if embarrassed.) Yeah.
Lulu: And after two days of seeing no white and orange blossoms in the thick green …
Sammy: Well …
Lulu: … Sammy was starting to accept …
(A beat.)
Sammy: See we, um … [Coughing awkwardly.] We got there a little too early.
Lulu: Wait, what do you mean?
Sammy: The flowers weren't blooming yet, Lulu. They just …
Lulu: Oh, Sammy!
Sammy: I messed up big.
(Slow music and sound effects, bugs in the night, begin together.)
Lulu: That night, on the houseboat, “Man Who Notices Overlooked Things” curled up under his mosquito net.
Sammy: (Sighing.) I thought to myself, “Oh, Sammy, you blew it, buddy. You blew it.”
Lulu: He thought about all the people who had believed in him, invested money in him.
Sammy: That's the worst part. It just makes me feel sad and burdensome.
Lulu: And he was realizing …
Sammy: Maybe it’s time to just cut our losses and go back early.
(A wind chime twinkles as a person whistles a good morning tune.)
Lulu: But the next morning, he had an idea. If they couldn’t find flowers to lure the bees …
Sammy: What if we made flowers to lure the bees?
Lulu: So they got to work making a smoothie they hoped would smell like a mangrove flower’s nectar.
Sammy: Crushing up a bunch of fruit, and adding in some honey …
Lulu: Crucial question: [Unbelieving.] Do bees eat honey?
Sammy: Bees love to eat honey. They're very attracted to it.
Lulu: (Shocked.) They do?!
Sammy: They do!
Lulu: What!? Wait, is that analogous to eating your own earwax?
Sammy: No!
Lulu: Or spit?
Sammy: No. So it's not something that their body produces.
Lulu: (Blown away.) It isn't?!
Sammy: No.
Songbud Alan: (Over a newsflash sound, interrupting the flow, in an old-timey voice.) We interrupt this programming to bring you a pressing “What Is Honey?” digression.
Lulu: So honey doesn't come out of bees?
Sammy: No, it doesn't come out of bees!
Lulu: (Almost yelling.) What is honey?
Sammy: A lot of people seem to think this–a lot of people call it bee vomit.
Lulu: Yeah! [Hitting the verbal brakes.] Wait, wait, wait. Alan, did you know that honey was not secreted by bees?
Songbud Alan: I kind of always thought it was like bee vomit. But is it just food gathered from flowers?
Lulu: (Realizing.) Ahh! Okay.
Sammy: Correct. So they fly to a flower, and the flower has nectar in it.
Lulu: It's like juice.
Sammy: Mhm. They'll suck up this nectar and they put it in something–in this little sack in their stomach.
Lulu: Like a little backpack inside the tummy?
Sammy: Yeah. So then they fly it back to the colony.
Lulu: Okay.
(Dark witchy music begins.)
Sammy: And they empty the backpack full of nectar into the comb.
(Fwoo! The “backpack” empties out as wings pick up the pace.)
Sammy: And they'll fan their wings.
(Fwoo! Fwoo!)
Lulu: Hah! Hah! Really?
Sammy: Yeah, they create this draft, [Fwoo!] and it causes a lot of the water to actually evaporate out of the nectar. [Fwoo!]
(A bee cackles as if a witch.)
Lulu: What a witchy little ritual!
(A song begins.)
Bee Witches: We dance and fan, dance and fan…
Around a cauldron of nectar as fast as we can! [“Hehehehehe!”]
Witches: Dance and fan, dance and fan!
Turning juice into honey with the wave of our hands. [Whoosh!]
(The song pauses for an interjection from Sammy.)
Sammy: Yeah!
(And the song is back!)
Bee Witch Chorus: (Spoken, an aside.) Well, technically with our wings.
Witches: High five, hive! Buzz buzz buzz! Ha ha ha ha!
(And it’s gone again.)
Sammy: That's how you get your honey.
Lulu: I truly did not know that until this moment. (Sammy laughs.)
Songbud Alan: (Over the newsflash sound, marking the end of the tangent.) That concludes our “What Is Honey?” digression report.
Lulu: Back to your story. So you're on the ground–
Sammy: Mhm.
Lulu: –Trying to set traps and bait bees with honey.
Sammy: Mhm.
Lulu: And is that working?
Sammy: No.
Lulu: You weren't even … ?
(Buzz buzz–deceptively, an influx of buzzing sounds, flies, enter in.)
Sammy: We got a bunch of flies. [Lulu chuckles.] We got fruit flies.
Lulu: (Laughing.) I'm sorry. I don’t mean to laugh at your misfortune.
Sammy: (Pretending to be upset.) How dare you, Lulu?!
(Jazzy music picks up.)
Lulu: Okay, okay. So you're making your potion, not working, getting covered in flies.
Sammy: Yep.
Lulu: And no bees? Not seeing any bees.
(A breath for a jazzy sax moment.)
Lulu: Even if flies hadn't been covering his eyes–
Songbud Alan: (No horn this time.) “Man Who Notices Overlooked Things”!
Lulu: –Wasn’t sure where to look next. He was out of ideas for what pathway or technique to explore.
Sammy: I think this one’s over for you, buddy.
Lulu: And it was in that moment, when Sammy finally admitted he didn’t have the answer inside his head, that he could finally see where it might be.
(The jazzy music comes to a halt.)
(Babulall’s voice returns.)
Lulu: Babulall, the jungle expert.
(Bababal speaks.)
Sammy: Babulall was kind of the leader of this four-man team that was helping us out.
Lulu: He was a local, from the Munda community.
Sammy: They are this really cool tribe that’s been living in the jungle for hundreds of years and they just seem to know everything about the area.
Lulu: Huh!
Sammy: Many of them make their living fishing and collecting honey from the giant honey bees. (Lulu grunts, impressed.)
(Gentle acoustic music.)
Lulu: The most giant honey bee on the planet, in fact, and one of the most dangerous animals in Asia, because of how they work together to swarm predators with their giant stingers. It’s a species called Apis Dorsata that Babulall hadn’t overlooked at all.
Mowgli: You are ready to catch some Dorsata?
Sammy: We are, thank you.
(The boat creaks underfoot as the two talk.)
Mowgli: We will get some, no problem!
Lulu: Now Babulall didn’t have any radio trackers or tiny bee belts, but he had something arguably even better: What is sometimes called “traditional ecological knowledge,” this deep understanding of creatures and plants that comes from living alongside them and watching them for generations. Now, knowledge like this has a history of itself being overlooked by Western scientists or dismissed as unscientific. But Sammy? Well, he was excited to learn from Babulall. It was part of why he had invited him to be part of the scientific team to begin with.
Sammy: He just had this huge smile.
(Babulall speaks, a smile in his voice.)
Sammy: Super confident.
Lulu: Okay! So how is he–how is he gonna find them?
Sammy: He said, “You just have to watch the bees.”
(Babulall speaks.)
Sammy: And I said, “We would love to watch the bees, but none have shown up for us.”
Lulu: Mhm.
Sammy: He said, “That's because they don't fly through the forest. It's a much better idea to fly above the trees.”
Lulu: So they're up above the canopy?
Sammy: Exactly. How am I going to get up there?
(The music ends.)
Lulu: Yeah.
(As Sammy speaks, new music enters: curious, airy, light.)
Sammy: Well, Babulall just started [Crunch! Snap!] climbing a mangrove tree.
(Babulall speaks as he climbs.)
Sammy: And I gotta say, he got to the top pretty quick!
Babulall: Ooh!
Sammy: Like, it was just …
(Lulu laughs a tiny laugh as we listen to the tape for Sammy’s trip.)
Sammy: There was no–it didn't seem like he needed to, like, psych himself up for it. If I needed to climb a tree, I just need y'all to know it's going to be a minute.
(Crunch!)
Lulu: And then Babulall just watched the air, the world above the canopy, until …
(Buzz!)
Lulu: He saw a bee!
Babulall: Ah!
Lulu: And he told Sammy, “Now, to find the hive …”
(As Sammy talks, the quiet music is taken over by hip-hop bee beats. Bee-ats?)
Sammy: You have to notice which shape they make as they fly. If the bees are flying around in this sort of “S” kind of pattern? Well, they're flying back and forth, and back and forth–
Lulu: Okay?
Sammy: –Because they're looking for food.
Lulu: Oh, they’re, like, swooping back and forth, scanning for flowers?
Sammy: Precisely. They’re probably flying away from home if they’re doing that. But, if the bees are flying straight as an arrow, making a beeline …
(Lulu catches the pun and makes a little cymbal crash sound as she and Sammy nod to one another.)
Sammy: … That's how you know that they're going home.
Lulu: Wow! So he’s, like, fluent in their choreography?
Sammy: Exactly.
Lulu: And after watching just a few bees make a beeline in the same direction, Babulall told Sammy …
Sammy: “It's easy. You just follow them home.”
Lulu: So they head off in the motorboat in the direction the bees pointed.
(Motorboat sounds mix with Babulall singing.)
Lulu: And, a little while later …
(A small wave of water keeps moving as the motor of the boat softly slows and then stops.)
Sammy: Oh, it looks like we're docking here.
Lulu: Hop off where Babulall tells them to.
(Jungle and footsteps, mud, as Babulall gives instructions..)
Sammy: This forest was a different kind of place. When we stepped off the boat, you'd sink up to your knee in mud.
(The mud squelches.)
Sammy: And then you trudge into the forest and the mud is still sucking on your boots every time you lift them.
Lulu: It was a place Sammy never would have intentionally look.
Sammy: (Sing-song-y.) Ouch, ouch, ouch! Lots of thorns! (Now speaking to the others.) Alright, mud’s getting deeper down here, guys.
Lulu: There were tons of roots.
Sammy: Ope. Watch out. There’s these spikes right here.
Lulu: And critters.
Sammy: Crabs running around at our feet.
Lulu: That made it super hard to get through.
Sammy: Ooh-hoo! That got me!
Sammy: Mudskippers, these little fish that can breathe air and are bouncing around on the mud …
Lulu: But that was the direction the bees had secretly pointed.
Sammy: Be very careful with these roots, y’all.
Lulu: And because Babulall knew how to understand them, that was the direction he kept leading the team.
(Babulall speaks as he guides the group.)
Lulu: Until!
Sammy: (In complete awe.) Wow! Oh my goodness!
Lulu: A hive.
Sammy: Look at them!
Lulu: Hanging from a tree, full of giant honey bees.
Sammy: They are dancing on the comb, which is really cool.
Babulall: Dorsata!
Sammy: They're beautiful.
(Babulall laughs lightly.)
Mowgli: Do you have a plastic bag for the bees? He will be moving it away with his hand and he can just brush some into it.
Sammy: So Babulall, he–he scrambles up this tree, this time with a smoker to calm the bees.
Mowgli: Ten, I said.
Sammy: Ten would be great.
Mowgli: Twenty?
Sammy: Twenty would be even better!
(Mowgli translates to Babulall.)
Lulu: And up there in the tree, with his bare hands, Babulall scoops about twenty of these hard-to-find bees into a bag for Sammy.
Sammy: Yeah, that’s plenty. You can drop it.
(A thump as the plastic bag drops to the jungle floor.)
Lulu: And Sammy stood there for a moment, looking at these crystal balls in his hands.
Sammy: (Now in quieter awe.) Wow.
Lulu: Some of which could hold the key–the wriggling, parasite-shaped key!–to keeping our bees safe.
Sammy: Isn’t it gorgeous?
Lulu: And then he gazed up at the canopy he would have never thought to look above, without Babulall.
(A whooshing of wind as Sammy looks up.)
Sammy: I looked up for the first time and saw these tangled branches of all of these trees, spiders that have made these beautiful webs.
Lulu: And it hit him that the best way to keep finding the overlooked things–to keep finding the discoveries that will keep our bees safe–was to … Well, behave a little bit more like them.
Sammy: Bees have taken over the world because their capacity to work together is unparalleled.
Lulu: These tiny creatures make millions of gallons of honey a year. They swarm to take down predators 100 times their size and flap their wings in unison to air condition their hives on scorching hot days!
(Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Bee air conditioning kicks in with each wingbeat.)
Sammy: And that kind of stuff only works with serious teamwork. They're better together.
(Sound from the group plays. Babulall speaks excitedly. Mowgli says, “It’s good! It’s good” in English, then translates. Other team members clap and laugh, excited at their discovery.)
Lulu: Thanks to Babulall, Sammy and the team are back in the lab with new bees to inspect and have already identified a tiny red parasite that could come for our bees some day.
(Crunchy mites crawl about.)
Sammy: A mite called the tropilaelaps mite–the “tropy mite” for short.
(Another whoosh.)
Lulu: Which means they’ve got a head start on figuring out how to stop it!
(Sammy makes the dramatic “dun dun dun” sound one last time as Lulu laughs.)
Lulu: Alright! I am gonna let you go so you and your team can go get [Pausing to soak in the pun she is about to make.] get bzzzzy. [Repeating the pun for emphasis.] Bzzzy on that.
Sammy: Oh my goodness.
Lulu: Okay, I will work on my puns! You work on vanquishing bee predators. (Sammy laughs.)
(Music.)
Sammy: (Rapping over an electronic beat, with a whole chorus to back him up.) I’m gonna work as hard as a honey bee showin’ the hive where the honey’s at. Brush that pollen off your shoulder, honey bee! It’s time to DANCE.
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
Shake it to the left Shake it to the right (ayyyy)
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
Shake it to the left Shake it to the right (ayyyy)
All the bees in the hive
Go on and brush that pollen off.
Brush that pollen off. Brush that pollen off.
Stretch your wings out and you make that buzzing buzzing sound.
Buzz buzz. Buzz buzz.
buzzing buzzing sound.
Do the math, honey bee, and spin your body ‘round.
spin your body ‘round
spin your body ‘round.
Go to work! Point the way to all the food you found.
Go to work! Break it down uh huh uh huh
I’m getting hungry now.
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
Shake it to the left Shake it to the right (ayyyy)
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
Shake it for the bees in your little bee hive.
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
I know you dance when you feel the power.
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
You got the whole hive looking for flowers.
Waggle waggle waggle
I know you’ve got it figured out
The way you waggle waggle, honey bee, break it down.
Spin around, shake it now, hit me with that buzzing sound
And you waggle waggle ‘til the colony knows what you found
Apis dorsata always showing off ya fly choreography
It’s trigonometry.
From Bangladesh to India and Singapore.
More like sting-apore?
Don’t you get too close or we sting ya more!
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
Shake it to the left. Shake it to the right (ayyyy)
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
Shake it for the bees in your little bee hive.
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
I know you dance when you feel the power.
Waggle waggle waggle waggle
You got the whole hive looking for flowers.
Waggle waggle waggle waggle waggle waggle waggle
(The song winds down with a few last high-pitched waggles!)
Lulu: Alan Goffinski, everybody! And that is all for Terrestrials. There is nothing else cool about to …
(Suddenly, out of nowhere, trumpets … well, uh, trumpet! It’s The Badgers!)
Lulu: (Whispered.) What's that?
Badger #1: Excuse me, I have a question.
Badger #2: Me too.
Badger #3: Me three.
Badger #4: Me four.
Lulu: (Whispered, but somehow loudly.) The Badgers.
(The Badgers theme song plays underneath the questions.)
Lulu: Listeners with badgering questions for the expert. [A beat.] Are you ready?
Sammy: Absolutely.
Leona: Hi! My name is Leona, and I’m 6.
Felix: Hi! My name is Felix and I am 8.
Leona: Are all bees vegetarians?
Felix: And do some eat meat?
Sammy: Ooh! Okay, so we love to say that bees are just vegetarian wasps.
Lulu: Huh!
Sammy: But! There's a group of bees called the vulture bees.
Lulu: Okay.
Sammy: They do scavenge dead bodies of things, often entering through the eye socket and just …
Lulu: Eww!
Sammy: Yeah.
Lulu: And they'll eat, like, flesh?
Sammy: Yeah! They even make a honey-like substance from this regurgitated …
Lulu: (Through her hands.) I wanna …
Sammy: (Understandingly–this is gross!) … Yeah.
Lulu: I wanna regurgitate. Wait, they make, like, a corpse honey?
Sammy: Yeah.
Lulu: Eww!
Alex: Hi, my name is Alex and I’m seven years old. Why don’t we use bees to guard money or gold in bank vaults?
Sammy: Humans have used bees as guard dogs before in some parts of the world, including, um, regions in Africa.
Lulu: Really?
Sammy: Where, when they're trying to guard their crops from animals like elephants that might want to eat their crops–
Lulu: Yeah?
Sammy: –They will put a bunch of bee colonies on wired fences. And when the elephant pushes against the wire, it will shake the bee colony, [Lulu gasps.] the bees will come out, and the elephant will run away.
Lulu: How smart!
Elizabeth: Hi! I’m Elizabeth Tartakovsky. I’m 24 years old and I’m an Olympic fencer. My question is: Do all bees die after they sting you?
Sammy: No! The queen has what's called a “straight stinger.” So she can just stick it in and pull it back out. The queens only really use their stingers to fight other queens.
Lulu: Bees sting each other?!
Sammy: They do.
Lulu: It's like fencing? Booty fencing?
Sammy: (Cracking up at the question.) Booty–? “Booty fencing” is the best phrase that I've heard all week.
Juni: Hi! My name is Juni. I have a question!
Juni’s Dad: What’s your question?
Juni: Do bees [Saying “sleep” almost like “sheep”.] sleep?
Juni’s Dad: Are you asking, do bees sleep?
Juni: Yup!
Sammy: (Chuckling deeply.) Do they sleep? Yes, they do! And the adorableness–a lot of bees will actually sleep inside of flowers. If you open a squash plant's flowers really early in the morning, you'll often find squash bees–
Lulu: Yeah?
Sammy: –Sleeping in the flower and they often sleep holding hands with another squash bee.
Lulu: No.
Sammy: It's the cutest thing in the world.
Lulu: Are you serious?
Sammy: It's so cute.
(Credits music begins, like a layer of cloud cover descending over the end of the episode, tucking the bees in as they go to sleep.)
Lulu: I can't! Okay, I think we've got to leave it there with two sleeping bees holding hands in a yellow squash blossom.
(Lulu gently buzzes.)
Lulu: Terrestrials was created by me, Lulu Miller, with WNYC Studios.
This episode was produced by Alan Goffinski, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Joe Plourde, and me with help from Sammy Ramsey, Rico Hernandez, Amanda Gann, Madison Sankovitz, Chris Borke, and Shin Arun-rug-stichai.
The Terrestrials team also includes Ana González, Tanya Chawla, Sarah Sandbach, and Valentina Powers, with fact-checking by Diane Kelly.
Big special thanks this episode to Babulall Munda and Rubaiyat Mansur Mowgli, both of whom, by the way, will be credited on any scientific papers that come out of the work they did with Sammy in Bangladesh.
Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Kalliopeia Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.
Thank you!
And finally, if you have a topic–a story, a creature, a person–that you think has been overlooked who we should cover, or if you wanna badger an expert, please email us at
Songbud Alan and Lulu: (Singing over barking dogs, xylophones, bubbles, and autotune.) terrestrials@wnyc.org!
Lulu: Hoo hoo! And that’ll do it for today! Thanks so much for listening. See you in a couple spins of this dirty old planet of ours. [Lulu whooshes a little on her own as the credits music covers over her voice, too.] Bye!
