Flemming Vejsnæs - Beekeeping and Apimondia 2025 in Denmark (026)

Flemming Vejsnæs - Beekeeping and Apimondia 2025 in Denmark (026)

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Introduction: Welcome to  2 Million Blossoms, the podcast, with host Dr. Kirsten Traynor.  2 Million Blossomsis dedicated to protecting all pollinators, from the solitary bee to colorful butterflies, to feisty hummingbirds, and of course, the honeybee. We bring you informative guests to awaken your understanding of the vast diversity of pollinating insects and animals worldwide. Because the more we know about pollinators, the better we can provide their habitats and protect them from disappearing forever. Sit back and listen, as Kirsten and her guests share in the passion they feel for all pollinators.

Kirsten Traynor: Welcome to  2 Million Blossoms, a podcast on protecting our pollinators. I'm your host, Kirsten Traynor, a bee biologist, beekeeper enthusiast, who fell into the incredible diverse world of pollinator research. Today, I've invited Flemming Vejsnæs onto the show to chat with me about bees and beekeeping in Denmark. I first met Flemming back in 2006, when I had a German Chancellor Fellowship to study the differences between European and American beekeeping. He arranged a tour for me to visit some beekeepers in Denmark, and we both ended up on the cover of an American bee journal.

Flemming, welcome to the show.

Flemming Vejsnæs: Thank you a lot. Nice to meet you again.

Kirsten: It's always a pleasure chatting with you.

Flemming: Yes, it was very nice to have you in Denmark, and it actually developed into a nice friendship over all the years.

Kirsten: This is true. I was very excited when we got to meet up again. Many of our audience probably never bumped into you unless they've been to an Apimondia or some other bee show where you often do appear. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Flemming: As you told yourself, we are in Denmark, the small kingdom. We just got a new king recently, a few days ago, a week ago or something like that. That's a big thing in my country. I'm a biologist. I made actually my master on pollination of wildflowers on meadows. Actually today, you could say one of those hipster wild bee people. I choose another way. At the beginning, before I became a biologist, I actually took some years on the teacher education. There I found out that all those small, unbehaved kids running between my legs and so on were maybe better for me to focus on adult people.

[laughter] Therefore, I changed my education and I started studying biology. There I made a nice thing that there was in a newspaper, a small advertisement beginner's course in beekeeping.

Kirsten: Uh-oh.Those are dangerous. They suck you in.

Flemming: Exactly. If I would have known today what that meant for my life, then I would still have done it. It's back in '87, so to say. Then when we finished our education, I was actually together with my partner at that time. We made our thesis together. It was very nice. We made this decision. The first one who was getting a job is deciding where we move. I got a job in the Beekeeper Association because I have been on this beginner's course. I could write something interesting. I remember clearly at that time, I thought one year in the Beekeeper Association and then I have a new job.

Now I have been there for more than 33 years and the Beekeeper Association has been a beautiful time with lots of excitement, ups and downs, that's for sure. This business is so exciting and so exciting people. I'm very happy to still be in the business. What happens over those 30 years were that I was employed mainly to develop strategies for fighting the varroa mites. That was a big problem at that time, the panic in Europe and especially in Denmark. Then we found out how should we fight those mites. Like you, we need to go to other countries, see what they're doing, learning.

That's what we did. We started traveling to many different countries simply to learn. This is my main message today is you have to travel. We have all to travel. We have to go to other places. We have to meet, we have to wander, we have to learn. We also are allowed to leave a place and say, "We can do that better at home."

Kirsten: [chuckles] That's good.

Flemming: Yes, it is really.

Kirsten: But you don't know unless you go look.

Flemming: Then we started traveling. I can give you one nice example actually is the small hive beetle. We had this big panic. It was found now in the US and you had relative big losses down in Florida, as I remember. There was big panic in Europe and everybody, all the scientists, they went to South America, South Africa to study the small hive beetle. Then a colleague and me, we said, "But shouldn't we go there where the problem is actually?" We went to Georgia and visited Keith Delaplane and Jamie Ellis up there, down there, just simply to see, to feel, to hear what are the problems.

At that time, a small hive beetle is a problem, but things had really from the panic settled a little bit more in that situation. This was the most important message that I could take home to my own country, the people, "Let's calm down, let's look at this very realistic what to do. They are doing this and this and this in the US and let us be prepared." That's also why we want to travel. We want to be in front instead of behind. I remember in Denmark when we got the varroa mite, we were behind because varroa mites is something that is down in Germany somewhere. It will never come to our place.

Kirsten: But then it showed up.

Flemming: Yes, exactly. Then we found out there, not just because of this, but we found out that we need to have those contacts all over the world. We got really involved in the COLOSS Network, this scientific network that's mainly in Europe, but the United States is also-- America is also very involved in the COLOSS Network. The COLOSS Network is maybe the best thing that has ever happened for the beekeeping scientific society because earlier, and that's my personal opinion, everybody were working on their own small islands.

Everybody invented the same wheel in Germany and Denmark. Suddenly now all the scientists, they met, they started talking to each other and they cooperated. There, from that point of COLOSS, in my opinion, again, was really there we got the big improvement in scientific work within beekeeping. We were very involved there and we were very involved in winter losses and what we call B-RAP. That's the group for dissemination, which interests me a lot to work with this. Then over the years, and of course, we were in the varroa group.

Then over the years we got more known, so to say, we started to get contacted because something happened within the scientific world or you could say it happened with our sponsors. The sponsors, they changed their attitude and they said, "Yes, we give you money, but you have to disseminate this work that you're doing." Now maybe I'm a little bit nasty, but early on it was, "I'm a scientist, I make my work, I make my publication. It's hidden behind a payment wall of something." Me as a beekeeper, because I regard myself as a beekeeper, I had to pay to get the information.

I couldn't find the information and so on and so on. At least within the European Union, they realized if we use lots of money, millions of euros, the knowledge should be available for the stakeholders or for the beekeeping business or something like that. That's now the important thing in my life is you need to involve the beekeepers and give them ownership and understanding of those projects that you're doing out there. Suddenly we got interested in an interesting subject because we were the ones having the close contact to the citizen scientists that we can use for those different projects.

This is what I'm doing today is that I'm working in now, I think five or six European Union, big consortiums where we work with rather big projects. We talk about five or six-million-euro projects. I'm in the, you could say the dissemination department and also the citizen scientist department. This is now my last sentence on that because my aim in my life is to connect beekeepers and scientists, making them meet each other. I try to raise the beekeepers and I try to catch the scientists, catch their angles, and get it down on the ground.

Then let's meet and see what problems are we really facing within the beekeeping society. We have plenty of problems within the beekeeping society.

Kirsten: Yes, I fully agree. I think it has to be very much a two-way dialogue. I think when it only flows in one direction, it becomes problematic. What do as some of the biggest threats that Denmark may be facing in the near future?

Flemming: Right now, unfortunately, we have to say that it's the honey price, unfortunately. It's really not diseases. It's something else. It's the market that is a big problem. I have to realize that we have to take it on our own shoulders as well. We talk about this fake honey. It is so easy to say fake honey, but the world market is overflowed with cheap honey. The biggest problem in Denmark is actually that you could say the big filling companies because now we talk about 30 tons of honey or something like, all honey sold directly from your door or at the local store or something like that, there's no price problems at all.

If you're sitting there as a commercial beekeeper, "I have 20 tons of honey," and the filling company, they said, "But we have plenty. We don't want your honey." Then we have a big problem. I do not know how to solve that at the moment. Lots of activities are going on. I just wonder why the European Union, where I belong to, why don't they simply just stop import of, let's say, fake honey or honey that's adulterated or something like that. We want to have pure honey on the market. I simply don't understand why this isn't solved. I think it's the same in the US as well.

Kirsten: I think consumer ignorance is a big deal. They just don't know. They're going to by price instead of what's actually in the jar.

Flemming: Yes. What I can see is in Denmark is that the imported honey looks very much like the Danish honey. That means that they want to have the Danish honey because we are the ones setting the price level. Then they buy very cheap honey and the filling companies, again, they own far more honey on the imported honey because they pay so little on the world market for that price. The Danish honey is used for raising the price so that they can create products that are actually cheaper. They're also nasty because we use a standard in Denmark, 450-gram glasses.

What do the big filling companies do? They make it on 380-gram jars and then they can also lower the price. Again, you said it's the consumer. I agree with you. I'm a consumer as well. I'm not standing there at the desk and looking, is there 450 or 425 grams or something like that? Then we have the big thing that we are fighting on in Europe at the moment is really we want to have on the label where's the honey actually coming from. This story, this honey is produced from countries inside and outside Europe or EU.

What statement is that?

Kirsten: That means anywhere in the world.

Flemming: It's no statement. That's the biggest problem. Then I would say varroa still keeps being a problem. We have not solved it. I'm very disappointed about myself because I have had 30 years now to solve the problem. We have the strategies, we have the organic ways of fighting varroa mites, but we're still fighting. I have to admit that because of varroa mites and virus load and that story, climate changes as well, we have to increase the number of treatments at the moment. Therefore in the future, and that's also some of the projects that I'm involved in, is really we talk about tolerance, sustainable beekeeping.

We have to rethink our business. We cannot keep going treating. That's a person telling you that, and I have been advising that for 30 years, keep treating. That's also one of the nice things in my life that now I have been here for 33 years and I'm starting evaluating my advisor life and what we have done and what we for sure can say. We never did anything to harm the beekeeping. Today you could maybe say that maybe already 30 years ago, we should have started focusing, going away from the hard chemicals, using more soft chemicals and we should have focused on non-treatment or less treatment or varroa tolerance in some level.

Kirsten: Are biotechnical interventions starting to be a thing in Denmark?

Flemming: Slowly, yes. I also have to say that the time is changing. The type of beekeepers that we have at the moment are different than they were for, I would say 25 years ago. It's 25 years ago, "Give me a strip." That was the attitude. Today people are much more open-minded. They're much more, I would say, green-orientated, sustainable-orientated. They want to save the world. They want to save the bees. They want to do it in the right way and in a good way. We can now start screwing on those buttons that we were not able to screw on 20 years ago.

Because I'm an advisor and if I go to a meeting, I want those beekeepers to say, "Cool Flemming, good talk." I don't want them to say, "Flemming, you're nuts. This is not possible in our--" It really needs to be a balance on what we advise and what they are capable to accept and where they really are in their beekeeping life at that moment.

Kirsten: Although I would say that anybody, myself included who works bees, we're all a little nuts, but that's okay. That's a good trait. You had mentioned climate change. In Denmark, you still have pretty long winters, but often very long days in the summer. What does that mean for beekeepers?

Flemming: You remember when we were kids, there were always snow up to our tip of our nose. This year in Denmark, we maybe had snow two weeks. Really because of the Gulf Stream and so on and climate changes, our winters has become very mild now. Now we're getting back to the point of varroa mites. Probably the Danish bees, they are having brood all winter long.

Kirsten: Oh, wow. That's a change.

Flemming: Yes, that's a change. Therefore, I just said it, I mentioned it that we need to treat more. Maybe that's the reason that we simply have this brood production all winter long. I did actually work in Norway for one year and there we have the winter that you're talking about, minus 10 degrees for three months or something like that. In Norway, they treat far less than we treat here in my country. I think that brood-free period is so essential in a successful varroa treatment. I remember when I came up to Norwegians, I had my strategies, and oxalic acid and formic acid, and, "You have to do this and this and this."

They were sitting there and they said to me, "Flemming, we just give an oxalic acid trickling in December. That's all--"

Kirsten: In the winter.

Flemming: Yes. "That's all what we're doing."

Kirsten: I used to be able to get away with intensive drone comb cutting and making lots of nukes and then just a winter oxalic but then the varroa mite pressure got so high, you had to start doing a late summer treatment. Otherwise, the colonies didn't make it to winter.

Flemming: Climate change is a big problem. Those climate changes are also coming to Norway now. They also have to increase the numbers of treatments. This is maybe also my take-home message is, I have a beekeeper and he always said to me, "Father," he told me. Then I asked the beekeeper, "How old is your father?" "Yes, he would be 120 today." That guy, he died 30 years ago or something like that but that beekeeper, he still kept keeping the peace. I have respect for that in the way that he was taught by his father.

My take-home message is actually that the climate, the environment, the agriculture, everything is changing in those years. We have to rethink our beekeeping all the time. We have to adjust our beekeeping to new situations. I don't want to be pessimistic because I'm a happy person, but it seems that it's changing a little bit faster than we like to know that it's actually doing. I think in Denmark climate is too mild. We should have a harder winter. That would have been nice, like as we were kids and where our parents were living. It's changing and we have to adjust that. That's my point on the climate changes.

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Kirsten: You used to have a huge problem with Nosema. You helped beekeepers tackle this issue. How were you able to reduce Nosema infections?

Flemming: Yes. That's a nice story and it's really not me. It was the queen breeders that back in the '90s, the beginning of the '90s, late '90s, middle of '90s, were talking, "What can we do on this Nosema issue? We have lots of Nosema in our bee colonies." At that time, they told me that the biggest economic impact on beekeeping at that time were really Nosema in the bee colonies. That there were some beekeepers or breeders at that time that sat down and they said, "We need to test our potential breeder queens."

Together with Ingmar Friis, do you remember him? The big scientist in Sweden. I just loved him. Unfortunately, he died some years ago, but he was the guy who was discovering Nosema ceranae at that time. Together with him, they made an algorithm and very simple. We made a lab, they made a lab, and picture recognition. Then beekeepers or the breeders, they were asked to take out first week of April, take 60 bees, we put it on this lab, and I really call it the kitchen table lab where we had some equipment.

There they squeezed the bees and they diluted them and then they put them into a microscope. Then together, especially with Ingmar Friis, we said, "Okay, how can we make this fast and easy?" Then we made this algorithm, we have to count so and so many times. Then we were able to judge how hard, how heavy are the bees attacked or how much nosema do they have in those samples. At that time, we had some queen breeders and they were really tough guys. They made a decision, they said, "We need to change this on nosema."

Every time we have a breeder queen and it had to higher level, we talk about non-nosema or maybe very weak nosema, then we couldn't accept it. If they had higher than that, they were excluded out of the breeding program. The reason why I'm telling this story is that some of them, they had lines. We're talking about Buckfast bees in Denmark, I have to say. They have had lines, let's say over 10 years or 20 years, their favorite, like their own kids. Suddenly it turned out that they were relatively weak against nosema and then they have to reject those lines and yes, they were crying.

My point here is actually that they were doing what I call this extreme breeding selection. It was really a yes or no. Within very few years, we could see on the samples that we made that we got less and less Nosema. Over the last many years, we talk about, at the beginning, it was 20% of the colonies that did not have any Nosema. Over the last year, we really talk about now that it is 80% of the colonies that do not have any kind of Nosema.

Kirsten: That's an amazing improvement.

Flemming: Yes, it's a very nice result. Please, we just did it on what I call kitchen science. What we did is we put this up, this algorithm up. It was done on a school where they were educating young people and they did it. The price was low and they got the results very fast. Definitely, you cannot use those results for, I would say now, scientific work or something like that but it gave those breeders a very good indication of the situation of the bees out there. Then some years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, that we had this Nosema apis, which were the Nosema in Europe at that time.

Certainly, this Nosema ceranae turned up and we could find out that this Nosema ceranae was spreading all over Europe slowly. In Southern Europe, they were totally in panic because they thought that was the reason for the winter losses. That was hittings in Spain. We tested the Danish bees and now we got it done in Sweden and it was really scientific done. Then it really turned out that the Nosema ceranae really had taken over in Denmark. We could only find very few spaces and spots where we had Nosema apis in the bee colonies.

You could say there that the Nosema apis got really wiped up out by the Nosema ceranae.

Kirsten: Yes. It's been almost completely displaced.

Flemming: Yes. Then something has happened over the last years. Okay. I have to mention one scientific article done by Huang in 2012. They took different breeds, different lines from around Europe. Then they took a line in Denmark and I think they did it in France. Down there, what they could do is that they could feed the bees with Nosema spores. That really turned out that there were a significant difference between the Danish bees and you could say the control beelines-

Kirsten: Local ones that you selected.

Flemming: -that they were using there. Now my very simple explanation were that those Nosema spores that had difficulties to germinate in the stomachs of the bees. I have to say it's one article and it was one Danish line that we were using, but we were very happy about this result.

Kirsten: Sure. Very cool results. It's always nice when evidence.

Flemming: If they confirm what we're hoping.

Kirsten: Yes.

Flemming: But then over the last years, actually we do a lot of testing and we have this testing system from the queen breeder. They sent in queens that they're selling for the customers, for the beekeepers. We are really testing it. It's really a customer testing. I get 10 queens from one breeder. I send it to 10 simple beekeepers or skilled beekeepers and they simply run those queens over a year and then they do different performing testing on it.

Kirsten: Okay. It's like a round-robin for queens where you get other queens evaluated.

Flemming: And there we could see how much nosema those bees they had and then we could see the honey harvest. Actually, if we put that together today, we can see that there's really no sharp correlation between the amount of nosema in those bees in the springtime and the honey harvest. It's just one big mess of dots on the graphic. Therefore we are over the last few years and we really do not know where to go evaluating. Has our victory been too big? Are the Danish bees tolerant to nosema?

It's really everything what I'm saying now is my personal opinion is that actually the Danish bees do not anymore get really harmed by nosema and have a heavy nosema attack. There is an article done also from Elke Genersch from Berlin writing about this Nosema ceranae that maybe it has problems in cold climates. Then I'm happy that I am still, and today I'm trying to keep my house warm. I am in cold climate, but I'm not in as cold climate as I really want to. This is what I call a very nice breeding success over many years and that our breeders, they kept sticking to what they believed in and they really got a success.

Today we are at a new place and we are a little bit confused because the results are not so consistent as we want them to be, as they used to be earlier on. This is what I call a typical story about the real life and what can we use it for. I'm not totally sure, but it was very nice work.

Kirsten: It sounds like you work really closely with beekeepers. I understand that Denmark is hosting Apimondia in 2025. You and your team are coordinating the event. What will be different about Apimondia in Denmark and what can beekeepers and scientists look forward to?

Flemming: Yes, I'm Danish and we're very modest people. We expect to make the best Apimondia ever. [laughter] No, but it's nice to have the goal, and then let's evaluate afterwards. It's going to be Apimondia Congress in Copenhagen and it's actually organized by the Scandinavian beekeeper clubs or beekeeper associations. The Swedish one, the Danish ones, and the Norwegian one. Of course, since it's in Copenhagen, in our capital, we will do the main work, but very nicely supported by our colleagues from our other countries.

Just a side note on this is that it's nice to have such a project because we are getting closer to each other. We now start working closer when you have a project like that. Just for the people that maybe do not know what Apimondia is, it's a world beekeeping conference. Really, I say like that, it's a conference where people from our sector, from all over the world, they meet each other. It's beautiful. We try to have beekeepers meet scientists and that's where you are coming in now. We want to connect, or Apimondia want to connect beekeepers and scientists both way.

Beekeepers, they meet what I call the industry, that could be equipment. There will be a big fair and we hope that there will be maybe 500, 600 exhibitors from all over the world. I can walk in this exhibition two hours every day and I just love kicking, you could say extracting machines and talking about that. It's really beautiful. Then of course we have the scientific talks. There will be scientists from all over the world coming and making what I call the 15 minutes talks presenting their work and it's very nice.

Since we're talking English right now, you and I and Apimondia Congress, main language will be in English. People that can understand what we're talking about now, they can just go there and enjoy it and have a good time. There will be a poster session. That means there will be maybe 500 posters where students, scientists as well, and so presenting their work there. Now we're getting to what you're talking about. What will be different? There will be this World Beekeeping Award where beekeepers from all over the world, they compete against each other.

Let's say making the best honey, actually, the best honey in the world will be judged there. We have lots of different categories. There'll be lots of categories in wax, candle making, and best innovation. You just name it. Best books.

Kirsten: Oh, exciting.

Flemming: Yes, you should bring some of your books. Normally, and this is now what we're getting to. We want this to be one big celebration. We want this to be one big firework of the variety within beekeeping. We want to invite the public and also people from all over the world to come and see, let's say maybe 500, 600 honeys from all over the world in different categories. We will see wax candle, we will see exhibitions, we will see all those things. It's really nice to see there.

Kirsten: Are you going to have a meat category?

Flemming: Of course, there's a meat category. By the way, meat, we are Vikings in Scandinavia.

Kirsten: I know, you guys are good at it.

Flemming: Yes, we have rather many meat companies. Of course that will be also a very important thing. Then there will be technical tours. There will be a lot of technical tours where you as a visitor of the conference, you can join. One of the nice ones will start in Copenhagen and then you will take a bus and then you will drive over the big bridge to Sweden. Then we will drive the way from Malmö in Sweden up to the capital of Norway, which is Oslo. On the way, we'll of course visit a few beekeepers.

Kirsten: Oh, exciting.

Flemming: Then we come up to Oslo, which is the capital. There we will see some city beekeeping. We will see some filling companies. We will visit some very exciting beekeepers. I'm sure we'll also visit the Beekeeper Association there. Of course, with all lots of social events and so on the way. Then when we finish this, and I'm not sure how long, I would say it would take three days. The bus will drive you down to the harbor and then there we will shift the crew because you will go on the ferry, which takes, I think, about 12 hours to sail along the coast and down to Copenhagen.

Of course, there will have been other beekeepers sailing up there and then we will shift and then we go to the bus. It's very important for us that you have the possibility to see our beekeeping. It's very important for us. That's the difference from other earlier conferences. We want to involve the beekeepers. We want them to show the Scandinavian hospitality. What we are working on right now is what I call beekeeper hospitality.

Kirsten: Flemming, what do you mean by beekeeper hospitality?

Flemming: The biggest gift I have got as being in the beekeeping business is that I'm traveling all over the world on many places. Every time I go somewhere, I simply go on the internet and I Google beekeeping, la, la, la. Then I find a beekeeper and then I call the beekeeper and ask him, "Do you mind me passing by?" Then I pass by that beekeeper and then we're getting what I call a beekeeper hospitality because beekeepers are proud people. We are proud about what we're doing. We're proud to showing other people bees and so on.

Very often it ends out that I'm sitting there and I'm not sure if I can get back home to my hotel because I got wine, I got food, I got everything. Because beekeeping is international, no matter if you are rich, no matter if you're poor, no matter if you have low education, high education, intelligent, non-intelligent, we have the same passion and that's the bees. That's what we're trying now to involve the beekeepers in Denmark. What we're doing right now is that we are making a map and we are asking beekeepers, "Would you agree on that somebody from the Apimondia Congress could contact you and come and visit you?"

The idea is, it's very important for me now is that this should be no payment involved. There might be a small payment because we don't want 20 people signing up for something and then I'm standing there and then I'm waiting for those people and they're not coming. The idea is that I open up my house and then there are some people coming, let's say from the US and then I show them my beekeeping and we start talking and we create friendship, we create connections. Those people now, they're coming, they're meeting me and maybe we also talk about political issues in my countries or history or Vikings or what you say.

It's kind of, we want to connect people and we hope to have quite a lot of spots where you as a visitor can come, you can sign up to go and visit people on different places. We always talk about small groups. It could be two per person, it could be five person. We're not talking about 20 or 30 person are coming in my house, and I'm not sure if I can do it because I would be busy. People would even be allowed to stay for the night if they want to because my kids have moved out. Actually, I have a big house but it's low. I want activities in my house.

There might be people that could say, "Okay, we're on the way to Copenhagen. I'm living one hour from Copenhagen." There could even be people saying they're coming in our van or something like that. I would say, "I have a big property. You can just put your van up there. Let's make some food in the evening together." What we have done now here is that we are four home hospitality beekeepers in our area. People, they can, within one kilometer. Some people will stay maybe one place, others the other place. Then we meet in the evening and then we make some food together.

On day two, we will say, okay, we show the bees. I have a big commercial beekeeper just around the corner. He will open up his apiary at three o'clock next day or something like that. Also when people are coming to my place, I cannot take care of them 24 hours. They also have to do some activities themselves. That's our hope that beekeepers will open up the doors. In Copenhagen, we hope to have quite a lot of, it will mainly be a lot of hobby beekeepers, but they open up during the Apimondia Congress so that you can say, "Okay, it's too much, too much exhibition, too much scientific talk or something like that.

I need to clear my brain." Then you go on this homepage and then you contact the person and ask him, "Can we pass by?" Then of course, I hope that person will bake a cake, will give a cup of coffee, maybe a glass of wine or something like that. My dream is this will be the Danish hospitality that we also in Danish call hygge. We will create friendships and connections and yes, an experience for life. That's the idea of it. We have our big meeting in two weeks. There, because I'm talking about lots of dreams here now, and there will also be outside the Apimondia Congress.

There will be a big event where we try to activate beekeepers, where we try to make activities with kids. Apimondia has always been something like for beekeepers. We also want to make a section for the public. One of our balloons that unfortunately maybe it will not land is that we wanted, we have the World Beekeeping Awards. That's, you could say that's the competition. We also wanted originally to ask everybody, bring one jar of honey and then we will put it on a big table outside. Then we will have what I call the customer competition.

Everybody that would go there and taste and then they will give a grading for that. Then we will also have the audience world best honey or something like that. Unfortunately, right now, there seems that if you ask-- never ask the authorities. We ask the authorities, is that okay that everybody's bringing honey in? Already now we get the complication. Yes, maybe possible from countries inside EU, but outside EU they have to have papers on it. Africa is impossible and so I do not know where this is. Maybe we'll go make a big, what I call audience competition for Scandinavian honeys.

I don't know, but I haven't given up yet, but sometimes the authorities are not, they're not in what I call celebration mode. They create their own problems and our problems. Sometimes when things doesn't succeed, it's not because of the organizers, it's simply because of somebody else outside coming problems.

Kirsten: You're running up against red tape on occasion.

Flemming: Yes, you're right. It's going to be nice. I'm so excited. It's going to be nice.

Kirsten: You sound excited. I'm definitely going to make it. Count on me.

Flemming: Yes, I have to come.

Kirsten: The last question that I ask all guests, if you had to pick a pollinator or a specific plant to represent you, what would you choose?

Flemming: I am choosing my favorite one. I even had to ask you at the beginning, it's called in English, Ragged Robin. It's a flower that's officially mainly is butterfly-pollinated. It's standing, it's red, purple color. It has deep petals. It's a beautiful flower. It's in the meadows and you can have to imagine we're in the wild Danish nature now. When you lay down there, you can hear all the insects flying around. It's on a summer day. You look up in the air and you also ask me what maybe is your favorite pollinator.

For me, my favorite pollinators are really the butterflies because the butterflies, they're flying around and then they see a flower, they go down with the long-- and they take some nectar and then they fly up again and then fly to another place. The reason why that's my favorite one is actually that that's what I made my master thesis on together with my partner at that time. It was a beautiful time because that was the time where the students were not forced to finish their fieldwork. We did the fieldwork two years and we went up there and we had all those spots where we had those Ragged Robin.

Then we really, with the tape recorder, looked what kind of insects are landing there. The Ragged Robin is officially a butterfly-pollinated flower. We found 63 different pollinators in those flowers at that time.

Kirsten: 63?

Flemming: 63 different ones, yes. The other thing were that we were very concerned at that time because there was also a beekeeper nearby. We thought, "Ah, he's spoiling our project and we will have only honeybees." Therefore the honeybees are also my favorite ones because the honeybees, they're not going to specialized flowers or plants. Doing two years of observation every day, 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes mid of the day, two times 30 minutes also in the afternoon, we never saw one single honeybee.

Already 30 years ago, I could say that honeybees and wild bees, they do not share wildflowers in a way that it's claimed today. There's of course food sharing, that's very sure. I have used two years looking on the same flowers and we never saw one honeybee, even that there were, I think 10 bee colonies very nearby our plots.

Kirsten: This plant was absolutely of no interest.

Flemming: Of no interest, no.

Kirsten: Fascinating. You saw bumblebees and other native bees?

Flemming: Yes, I did.

Kirsten: It's certainly a pretty flower. It looks a little bit like a firework going off.

Flemming: Exactly. It's beautiful. Then the nicest part of that was, of course, I was doing that thesis together with my partner at that time and it was so beautiful up there. We did also pollinate ourselves. In that way, we became our son Thomas and he's for sure done doing the field testing. I'm so sure about that today. That's a nice memory. Therefore, it's my favorite flower.

Kirsten: Very cool. Thank you so much for being on the show. It's always a pleasure talking with you and I wish you much luck in organizing Apimondia. It will be a killer event.

Flemming: I'm so sure. Now I'm getting nervous, please everybody join us and it will be a great event.

[00:42:38] [END OF AUDIO]