AI in the Bee Yard with Joe Meyer (409)

0:00 Hi, this is Crystal from Carey, Ohio. Thank you for listening to Beekeeping Today Podcast. Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Better Bee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott. And I'm Becky. Masterman. Today's episode is brought to you by the bee nutrition superheroes at Global Patties. Family operated and buzzing with passion, Global Patties crafts protein-packed patties that'll turn your hives into powerhouse production. Picture this: strong Colonies, booming brood, and honey flowing like a sweet river. It's super protein for your bees and they love it. Check out their buffet of patties, tailor-made, for your bees in your specific area.

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1:23 You can find it all at www. beekeepingtoday. com. Thank you, Crystal. Crystal from Carey, Ohio, that's over in kind of like south of Toledo area, I think, if I recall my Ohio geography correctly. Thank you, Crystal, for that great opening from the North American Honey Bee Expo Go, Ohio, can I just say that? Yeah, go Bucks. Go Bucks. I feel like I just have to say that. That's Milwaukee, Jeff. I'm kidding. The hardest thing about fall going into winter for me at beekeeping is just you go from running a hundred miles an hour and worrying about the bees, thinking about the bees, doing for the bees Prepping for the bees, blah, blah, blah.

2:09 I say that with all due love and respect for the bees. Jeff, do we need to talk about this? Did we have to say blah? No, no, let's uh And so on and so on so forth. Uh-huh. That Then all of a sudden it's it's over. It's done. It's just like you've put him to bed. Now what do you do? And this is when I get into trouble because I start thinking I should fill that time with something. And that's where you start reading and get caught up in reading. And the latest, you know, you might go back into Facebook and get caught up on all the social media stuff about bees. Podcasts. Pod get caught up on podcasts.

2:50 Excellent. There's some great episodes and podcasts. out there on there's only one podcast for beekeeping, but that's a different. That's not true. We have friends who have other podcasts. That's true. Very good podcasts. I'm sorry, it's just shameless plug. There's room on the boat for everybody. There is. There's room in the apiary for all of us. Thank you for calling me on that. I am properly put in my place. But what do you do with that time and what do you do for yourself during this time of year? Okay, so I'm still catching up. But I will say that the spreadsheet gets looked at again and I start to anticipate, okay, what what equipment needs might I have?

3:33 What's my queen plan for for next year? and how can I do it better? I think how can I be Better for the bees, uh more efficient, what kind of supplies honestly will they need to stock up on for the bee expo? So that's really important. Big picture, like w what did I miss and what do I need to do better at? Oh, and I've I still have to paint boxes. You're always painting boxes. I know, and lids and all that. Do you go back and check what worked or what didn't work at your list from last year? I will tell you that Oh, that's such a so that was that was a trick question. I am always learning. and the circumstances that I had this fall have led me to want to ask a number of questions about especially about wintering bees.

4:22 And I I had to be more hands-off this year. I was hands-on with with mite mitigation and I my my bees kind of surprised me because I I always ask the question Are we doing things because we're told to do them and it's good for the bees? Or are we doing things because it's what the bees need? And so I've got a couple of questions that I want to ask that I've been talking to other beekeepers about. So That's a long answer, but it turns out that I'm in thinking mode, research mode for those questions. And that's what I've ultimately and I poorly led up to it, but that's what I spend this time doing is getting caught up in my research and Instead of laying in bed at 2 a.

5:03 m. in the morning worrying about the bees and thinking about the bees, I'm able to put that to rest, not to beat that pun to death, but I'm able to more effectively use my time during the day to plan and analyze and review and then go forward and plan for the coming year, which is fun. Planning for the coming season is always, always fun. If you were to say one great thing that you were gonna do for twenty twenty-seven with your bees, I know we have some great things coming up in twenty twenty-seven, but with your bees, what would it be? I am for sure going to make sure that I have space for all of them. Oh, do you mean space in a bee yard? In an apiary? So I'm I'm putting more bees into winter than I ever have.

5:47 and they and you know, knock on wood, they do look really, really good. And so my biggest thing that I'm going to have to figure out is just what to do with them. And because when you start when you have two colonies and you start doubling up it just doesn't take that long to get to a number of colonies that's it's kind of big. And so I really do have to make some serious decisions as far as what I'm gonna do with my bees. And whether you're talking about two to four or sixty to a hundred and twenty, that's a decision one has to make at some point you reach a threshold where You have to make that decision. 'Cause that doubling number gets m more and more expensive.

6:28 Yep. And it takes up a lot of space, both in the apiary and other apiarys and Storage. And storage, yep. If yep yep. I've already got that figured out, but and then there's a lot to paint s and put together. So yeah, I you're catching me at a bad time right now Well, this is a month to be thankful for and really that's really what I was trying to lead to and and reflection and so I think that's good in preparation for twenty twenty-seven. And if if I need to sell bees, can I buy a commercial on the podcast? I'll sell you anytime you want Becky on the podcast. Fantastic. Yeah. Well one of the things That's new to us as a tool, and I'm looking forward to our next guest to help us with this, is the use of artificial intelligence or AI.

7:16 in beekeeping. I love dipping my toe in the AI water as far as as far as beekeeping is concerned. I've found a lot of, you know, really fun questions including pricing out expansion opportunities. So just how expensive will this be? and the ability of AI to hold all of this information. I mean I love a spreadsheet, but boy it it is just not sophisticated compared to what AI can do when you're looking at multiple numbers and multiple costs and different cost scenarios, different price scenarios. I mean I just feel like we're not using it enough, or at least I'm not personally, but I know some beekeepers are.

8:02 Some beekeepers are ahead of me. Which is good. Our next guest, Joe Meyer, we brought on the show to talk to us about artificial intelligence, what it is, what it does. Let's hear from Joe right after these words from our sponsors. Excellent. For more than 45 years, Betterbee has proudly supported beekeepers by offering high-quality, innovative products, providing outstanding customer service. Many of our staff are beekeepers. themselves and sharing education to help beekeepers succeed. Based in Greenwich, New York, Betterbee serves beekeepers all across the United States.

8:42 Whether you're just getting started, Or a seasoned pro, Betterbee has the products and experience to help you and your bees succeed. Visit betterbee. com or call 1-800-632-322. 3379. Better be your partners in Betterbeekeeping. We'd like to thank Vita bee Health for supporting this podcast. Vita provides proven tools for controlling Varroa, Apistan, and Apiguard to the new VarroxSan extended release oxalic acid strips, helping beekeepers keep stronger.

9:22 healthier colonies. Welcome back everybody sitting around this great big virtual beekeeping today podcast table. And really you guys aren't too far away. We have our guest Joe Meyer Hello? Hi Joe. You're sitting in St. Paul, Minnesota. I think you're just what down the street from Becky in St. Paul Mm. It's probably just a couple miles, I bet. I thought we're that we're that close. You can probably put a tin can on t a long stream and talk to each other. Just open the windows. Joe, do you keep bees in St. Paul? I do have two hives in my backyard, yes. Legally or uh Uh I Okay. We don't need to do that. Anyway. Well Joe, welcome to this show.

10:02 Don't want to get you in trouble. I think you said you were uh somewhere in Minnesota, southern somewhere in Minnesota. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Edge of Wisconsin, maybe in Wisconsin. Well Joe, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in bees and then we'll go from there. I started as a teenager. I had parents that were avid gardeners and so when one of their kids took an interest in pollinators, they were very supportive. I managed two to six hives for about a decade. And then at some point scaled up to uh rearing local queens. So I was managing somewhere around sixty to a hundred hives for about four or five years. Yeah, I've just never stopped finding fascinating things to learn about them and just always been able to dive deeper and find hobbies within hobbies within hobbies.

10:50 So Very easy to do and beekeeping. And Joe, you've been connected in various ways through the University of Minnesota Bee Lab. That's how I first met you. But but you spent some time working there and then collaborating, right? Yeah, so part of that transition to or starting a queen-rearing business was spending a summer managing research hives at the U of M working alongside Gary Rooter and getting some wonderful uh inspiration and wisdom from Marla Spivik I'm connected with a lot of amazing people like yourself, Becky. Oh see, I was fishing for that. Thank you. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But one of one of Marla's passions is is breeding queens and breeding selecting for for different traits for lines and so so that is something that that she definitely has Yeah, I'm I'm guessing lots of conversations with Marla about that, correct?

11:45 Yes, yep. She was instrumental in a lot of starting that up and uh being in Invaluable resource whenever we had hiccups or questions, she was very supportive. What was the first aspect of of raising queens that drew you in? Why did you I mean because that's very specialized and very focused Yeah, I guess I found a lot of purpose in raising queens. A lot of the uh frustrations I had with keeping my own bees, wanting to scale up in an economical manner, uh meant Well, there's no better way to multiply your uh your hives than raising your own queens. And being more in control of the genes and selection yourself uh just gives you a lot of freedom.

12:25 managing a queen r calendar alongside honey production is challenging. I ended up liking producing queens a lot more. And so I have always I think my honey production has always taken a hit because of how much I enjoy splitting and making queens. So yeah It's just a fascinating process to uh dive into and to, I don't know. It's that part just really uh tickled my brain in a in a wonderful way. Also, Jeff, I'll tell you that we had Joe at the Minnesota Beekeepers Association's field day talk a little bit about Queens and a system he has for mating queens. That's just a teaser, but go ahead and share a little bit.

13:07 I've been mating multiple queens in one hive, so using a somewhat standard queen castle or mating hotel I call it a common colony, so I put a queen excluder over top and have like an an area where the workers can mix, but the queen—the virgin queens can't get out and reach each other to fight. And I have had uh Let's see, I should have the numbers offhand. I think I averaged about 75 % success rate, placing cells and getting a mated queen. And the benefit of the Co spit coal working space for the workers? Yeah, you I never see Lang workers. So as long as If one compartment fails, the support staff of that colony just kind of shift over and move to where a queen did succeed.

13:52 So a lot of the guesswork when you open a small mating nuc is gone. It's pretty black and white whether there was a success in that compartment or not. I think it takes a lot of the risk out of of mating nucs for anyone getting into queen rearing and That can be a tough part, re-queening with cells, working with cells and with virgins. So Have you m used the term mating castle? Queen castle? So can you describe that? Certainly, a standard deep divided into four compartments. Traditionally you have the dividers be solid so the bees can't reach. And I discovered this work by accident because of shoddy workmanship where I had colonies where the workers were squeezing through and I still found a successful queen mating happening on both sides of that divider.

14:40 And so then I started doing it intentionally and maintained my success rate as I did that and found a lot of other advantages to doing it that way. I have yet to write something up, but I have drafted something for e-culture. That's a good tease. For my visual understanding what you're doing, instead of using uh a solid divider board in the standard Langstroth bottom deep, you're using queen excluder type material on that bottom on that division board They're still solid divider boards and they are flush with the top of the deep hive body and then a queen excluder goes over top. So when the cell emerges uh queen emerges from the cell she would have to go up through the exclude excluder over the solid divider board and down to another excluder Because Queens can still fight through an excluder.

15:27 So she has to go through it twice. So Queens can't meet to fight. Yeah, that that has worked out well for me. It's a scalable tool that that's it's not overwhelming for somebody who's growing kind of slowly. But We could talk queens all day. And and we can we can maybe do it another time. But Joe, we welcomed you here today because of your actual use of AI in your beekeeping toolbox. You you I love the email. I should I should pull it up, but you very gently sent an email after Jeff and I released our our little AI conversation, which was was very It was fun, but but you you so gently introduced a couple of topics that explained what maybe a chatbot can do versus an actual agent and then also some of the ins and outs of of AI and the bee yard and really the direction it can go.

16:25 And so we want you to talk to us like, okay, Jeff, Jeff is a tech guy, but but Talk to us like we don't know anything. And you're gonna lead us, you're gonna hold our AI hand and lead us through this conversation. Does that sound does that sound good? Yeah, that sounds great. The place I would like to start is just how AI is such a broad term, right? There's so many technologies that are just dumped into this one label and It is it's enough it's very overwhelming even as someone who follows it. The pace at which the language around it is changing, the pace the technology is changing. It's it's uh head spinning time to be alive and to be navigating this.

17:11 Parts of it are exciting, parts of it are are scary, maybe even existential dread at times if if you're following it too closely. And but yeah, the intersection of beekeeping and AI I find fascinating and have been working with for quite some time now. I started Working on a beekeeping app 10 years ago to help manage notes in my queen rearing operation And with the advent of AI and it getting better at coding programming, it has really allowed me to tap into these tools and use them in a way that I find very beneficial. I have, let's see, over the many winters I've worked on an app, and I think the place that I've found the most use of AI is around note-taking.

17:58 No taking is something every beekeeper wants to do well, but when the rubber meets the road, when you're out there suited up gloves on, it's there's a lot of real challenges beekeepers face. I started focusing on voice quite a while ago because it's the highest bandwidth way to get data out of your head and into your phone into something tangible. I guess I'm already diving into one specific thing. Maybe rein me in a little bit here. Okay, well okay, let's take a step back. So so Ten years ago, it's forever in technology, right? And so when you started ten years ago, what problem were you trying to solve?

18:41 And then I assume the tools that you're using to solve that problem have changed dramatically? Yeah, and my understanding of the problem. So when I started out, I built a note-taking app that was very forms-based, like many of the apps available. And I was trying to solve a problem. of co -managing hives. I started a business with a friend of mine and we started out keeping notes in three ring binders. in ammo cans at each of our ape I I still think that's funny. I not funny funny not funny haha but just it's good actually. I liked it. Right. It allowed us to collaborate but I quickly found the shortcomings of of physical notes, right?

19:25 They weren't where I needed them when I went back to my computer or was trying to evaluate stuff. They were still sitting in the field, dry in an ammo can, which is great. But Most of your notes are very transient, right? Like I think every beekeeper has a notebook sitting in their closet from five years ago if they were keeping bees that long that is just chicken scratch. And I know I do. I have tons of them from that era that feel almost useless at this point, but they serve their purpose week to week. But Beekeepers have devised really clever ways of taking notes, rotating bricks, pins and frames. And they're they're elegantly simple and honestly I don't think any app can replace it or do that better.

20:07 And I guess this is where the AI tools come in for me of they now When you speak to a computer, it can understand you. So the the opportunity for a voice first operating system of a voice first app is possible, even for something with all the jargon that beekeeping has, right? Beekeeping is very weird. The word super is used as a verb, as a noun. We just had a debate about this at the our club meeting, Becky, or not a debate, uh minor lecture, I guess, about I think it was a lecture. Yeah. And so that feels like For a long time that felt unapproachable by tech, like it was never gonna grasp that.

20:53 And then in this advent of AI, some of these voice models could do it. And I I don't feel a lot of people understood that and still don't understand it because the voice to text on your phone is still quite terrible at times. A good example is You can say I need a pollen patty and your voice to text would type out the names pollen patty It's it's comical, but it's a it's a huge problem when you're trying to take notes of the beekeeper. Uh because it does not make sense and it does not work. So I spent a lot of why do you need to feed them? Right. And I ran into a number of things like that.

21:33 That's the most notable one. But I found when Working with different voice to text models, if I could figure out a way to give them context of beekeeping, they would they would get this right. They could take that on and they could take on even more complicated stuff. I demoed The app I was working with uh working on with the U of M Bee Lab researchers and they they took a note about uh Bumblebee and used the Latin name for it, this long long name and the voice text got it and nailed it spelling and everything and that I certain think raised a number of eyebrows of just how powerful this tech can be. Clarify for me, so when you're talking about voice to text agent or voice to text, are you talking about chat or Gemini or whatever your platform of choice?

22:22 Are you talking your notepad app? in your Apple iPhone or whatever. What are you talking about when you're referring to that? Sure. So there are a lot of different types of AI models. that specialize in doing different things. We uh are I think a lot of people are familiar with ChatGPT and uh those are all chatbots and some of them now, Gemini ChatGPT are multimodal, meaning they can work with audio clips, they can work with images, they can work with text. And the model is trained on different types of data and can move from one medium to another. So if you give it voice, it can type back, it can transcribe it, can respond to it, can generate images from it, right?

23:02 That's all generative AI. And people like to think of that as a a fancy autocomplete, right? If you have this sentence started, there's a pretty good likelihood these words are coming next. And that is the basis of the technology, but being able to String together coherent thoughts and then take those and route em back through a model. A lot of other capabilities started emerging from that process. And that's where we get into reasoning, we get into all these things that we start to think of as intelligence of them being able to take on more and more capabilities. And so we have these technologies that can work with all these different mediums So as a beekeeper, as an everyday person moving through life, pretty much anything that you are recording or able to digitize, whether you're snapping a photo of your notebook that you sketch your note your beekeeping notes in.

24:01 I think going forward, those archives, we're going to be able to work with them relatively easily. You have this these processes. these models that can now take in all of this information and reason through them, clear them up, summarize them. So Uh, for me, it's a really exciting time to be a beekeeper because we are at the forefront of this rapidly changing Climate, we're at the forefront of how we're using our land, how things are changing, what what's going on in the natural environment around us. And I think there's a lot of value and a lot of importance in beekeepers documenting what they're seeing and where and how they share it.

24:46 So that I find a lot of purpose in working with that information and trying to get tools in Beekeepers' hands so that they can use that. to their advantage or to amplify their voice because I think it's growing increasingly important to do that. This is a great opportunity to take a quick break and we'll be right back after these words from our sponsors. Beekeeping is demanding work. The last thing you need is equipment that can't keep up. That's why Premier Bee Products builds every frame and hive body in our South Dakota factories with one goal in mind. Reliability when it matters most. From our beefy pura frames to our natural profile high bodies with rough interiors, we design for long life, in the field and in the colony.

25:35 Because we believe that in beekeeping, Details make all the difference. Premier Bee Products, better for bees, better for beekeepers. Visit online at PremierBeeProducts. com or call us today. Use promo code PODCAST for 10% off your new. Next online order. Beekeepers, if you're looking for a smarter way to support colony health, take a look at Bee Bites from Strong Microbials. Bee Bites are a new protein. Patty made with spirulina, chlorella, and targeted probiotics, designed to support nutrition without creating new problems in the hive.

26:16 With 15% protein, Bee Bites are unique because they do not attract small hive beetles. Big deal if you've ever battled infestations during feeding. Strong Microbials has been supporting beekeepers and farmers since 2012, developing high-quality commercial probiotics and nutritional supplements you can trust. Learn more about Bee Bites and their full line of bee nutrition. At strongmicrobials. com Welcome back everybody. I think what I'm understanding that I'm hearing you say is that the capability is there now to do some pretty impressive things with note taking. But you haven't said it yet, but I'm wondering if you would. Is that for me to be able to harness the power of of great note taking and transcribing and voice to text and I'm not going to accomplish it by just having a conversation with ChatGPT.

27:09 I need maybe a beekeeper developed tool. Because the the standard chat conversation might not bring me to where I need to be or likely won't get me there. Does that make sense? Is that Am I understanding it? I think there's it depends on what you're trying to accomplish, right? So I think as you talked about in the last episode where you guys covered AI. There was a number of you talked about chatting and working through research and that's something I've done a lot too. So As I uh I like to experiment with different methods of beekeeping, like most beekeepers do. I think on some level everyone's tinkering, everyone's doing their own home experiments with some portion of their hives.

27:51 And the ability to quickly sit down, talk through them, have it dive into research papers and summarize them for you can really eliminate some stupid mistakes. AI models aren't perfect, so it can also create some new stupid mistakes that I think you guys covered. And uh you know, I had a similar experience to you, Becky, where I had a colony, I tried to explain where this colony was at and I was Trying to figure out if a if a chatbot could figure out when the brood break window would be for a well timed oxalic dribble, right? and it couldn't do it. Um it didn't match up. I quickly did the math myself and I'm like, yeah, that that was off.

28:32 So We talked about how quickly uh AI is changing, um, how headspinning it is, and it's it's hard to tell where the gaps are. in what an AI model is capable of. Jeff, you talked about vision models, essentially. You were alluding to trying to get ChatGPT to count mites on your photo. Yeah Which is a great use of AI and there should be tools for it. And ChatGPT as a chatbot is trained on all these conversations probably from Beekeeping forums, whatever, where it's one beekeeper talking to another, and in that conversation, this person is saying, Yeah, send me a photo of your of your mites and I will help you count them.

29:16 And that makes sense in a conversation and that's what ChatGPT is mimicking. But when ChatGPT then As a as an AI system goes to call, like, do I have a special tool, a vision model for what a Varroa mite look for? It comes up blank. And it doesn't know to just say, I can't do it until you call it on it and say, Yeah, yeah. And then it's like, oh right. It was a very funny interaction. No, I'm sorry. No, you're right. We should be using they. It's it's No, no, no. I was just saying because Chad didn't ad couldn't admit that he couldn't do something. Oh I see. Yes. Possibly. Anyway, I'm just We maybe have to cut that out because we might get some emails on that one, Becky.

29:58 I think I think there are women who are laughing with me. Yes. And then there are men who are saying, Oh so anyway, okay. I'm sorry, I let us off track so yeah, as we use it, we were finding these gaps. You know, in this a very common example of this was chatbots not being able to tell you how many R's are in strawberry. So as that became more apparent research AI researchers put efforts into giving chatbots that system, right? You're no longer talking about just an L L M. You're talking about a whole system of a chat bot navigating tools, navigating different computer programs it has access to try and give you the best answer it can.

30:39 So ChatGPT might one day have a vision model specifically tailored to what a Varroa mite is. and what the scenario you gave it and small hive beetle and be able to give us those results, but it's also kinda using the wrong tool right now, right? Like you're grabbing a sledgehammer this giant powerful ChatGPT and asking it to do this very specific task. So I think s one of the ways AI might move is towards more efficiently getting people to the tools they need. And I know these AI companies are doing this already. They somewhat because of the cost it is to run these heavy sim systems. is to get you to the tool as efficiently as possible that does what you want you want it to do.

31:23 So yeah, and computer vision is a whole nother level. I've I've started programming a uh computer vision model to count mites in my own little experiment and having AI assist me in developing that tool, right? So I think one of the one of the wonderful things about AI is it's kind of democratizing Software development. I'm building a beekeeping app, but I feel like everyone I interact with online is also building a beekeeping app, those who are well versed in AI tools, because it becomes more of how well can you communicate in natural language in your in English or whatever language you speak into what you want and what you want your phone to do, what you want your computer to do.

32:09 And these chatbots and other large language models are getting very good at coding and can make that software for you. So A big issue with computer vision models is controlling the environment they're filmed in, especially when you're filming bugs—essentially a bug on a bug. Lighting. the environment and how reproducible it is, the more you can control that environment, the smaller that model can be that does that task. So I think it's very realistic with the current technology that we have a small edge computing device it's called, like a small computer. People might be familiar with a Raspberry Pi. But there's hardware that can run off batteries, essentially, that you could bring out to the API that could run a model smart enough to count mites on in a specific environment.

32:59 Doing this with phone footage is tough because everyone holds their phone a little different. Everyone has a different model of phone, which has different camera hardware. And you need a bigger model to navigate all those variables. So that's a tool I'm excited to see that I think is not far in the future, one that I've personally made some progress towards, but who knows how long it'll take me to get through it. What you're building is that from a phone video or did you say did you develop something using uh I'm using a Raspberry Pi camera. So a camera connected to a small single board computer called a Raspberry Pi. And I'm finding the hardest part isn't necessarily the computer vision model. It's actually a bee behavior problem of how do you get the nurse bees that we need to monitor that you would put in an alcohol wash, how do you get them to walk across a filming surface?

33:50 When you shake 'em into a box, they don't just run out. They're like, hey, this is warm and cozy. I'm gonna just hang out here and they don't leave. I've actually spent the last two falls trying to figure out how to get them to walk out of a box across a camera, uh in a fairly controlled way. When you add smoke or other stuff they kinda run all over the place and it's more panic a more panicked motion and harder to Work with. Okay Joe, I'm gonna ask this again. This sounds very complicated. So it sounds like in order to do some of these kind of high level analyses that have AI help you, you really I've yet to in my life worked with AI to program anything or write code.

34:38 And I don't think I see that in my future. So so so so I'm seeing like two lanes. One of them the beekeeper who who's familiar with the technology is going to drive us down this path and we're going to have enhanced capabil and more accurate use of the AI tools. And then there's another lane where Beekeeper can have a conversation with with a chat bot potentially still learn a lot, but it doesn't need that sophisticated enhanced use of tools. Is that do you do you see the lanes I'm I'm looking at? Yeah. Um I think so. There What we're going to see.

35:18 There are people who are tech minded like myself and possibly Jeff who are using these tools. And They're experimenting with different workflows, and as we sort them out and find out what's possible, what is reliable, what the shortcomings are we'll be able to package these up into an app that you can download on your phone and use. A lot of the apps are already integrating voice to text or voice to auto filling out forms. HiveTracks does this. HiveBloom is also working on this. And some of this technology is already going more mainstream beekeeping and is putting these tools in your everyday beekeeper's hand if they choose to use them.

36:02 I think that there's also a lot of machine learning, computer vision models being used in industry. We have companies like BeeWise, which was in the news lately, not necessarily in a positive light, around pollination contracts, but they have robotic beekeeping and they have to have their own proprietary vision models of pulling frames, inspecting them. So there's technology out there already. I for one don't want robot beekeepers in my apiarys anytime soon. Uh I very much am looking at these tools And keeping the mindset of how do we keep a human in the loop rather than a human on the loop is the phrase I've heard.

36:43 You're more of a spectator. But you're still involved, even in note-taking, the systems that I've been working on are around here's your transcript. Here's how we want to move it to your notes and making sure you're a part of that process. I think there's I think there's a lot of potential to Do these jobs that beekeepers don't have time for or aren't as well versed in. Uh for myself as a beekeeping entrepreneur, I don't have a business degree, so having Chat GPT helped me draft a business plan, a land use agreement has been really helpful in taking some of those tasks and giving me a first draft to to fix, right? Not Anyone who's using these models and not looking twice at them is using them wrong, I would argue.

37:29 They make mistakes. You are accountable for anything they're doing that you're asking them to do. So I treat them as them giving me something to hate, something to react to, something to fix, edit. They get rid of the blank page issue. I love you, right? You I don't know where to start. I I just sit so the way I often use AI is I sit down and I type Maybe even a whole page of just my ramblings. I hope it's not too obvious of just how scattered my thoughts can be at times and I found uh it incredibly useful to have AI help me sort through through my thoughts, structure them, create an outline, and pull out main points that I can focus on.

38:11 And there's certainly a risk in doing this of any cognitive effort that you're offloading, you risk losing or it atrophying. A good example is GPS. We use Google Maps or whatever to navigate to the point where we don't know our w own way around. Uh our hometown. Or street names or anything else. Yeah, it's definitely uh if you don't use it you lose it kind of thing. So we need to be careful how we use these AI chatbots and what we offload. Something I try and be aware of. But when you're navigating a new space, when you're learning something new, run as I mentioned, running a business, it can be a great sounding board or point you in the right direction of good resources.

38:54 And uh this kind of leads into something you mentioned in the previous AI episode, Becky, around how it's changing beekeeping education, right? And this isn't the first time beekeeping has gone through this When I started beekeeping as a teenager, I voraciously read every book in the libraries I went to. And now I learned things through YouTube. And most of beekeepers I know that have learned in the last decade are watching YouTube videos. And I think going forward, AI is going to play a huge role in how you learn beekeeping. Going to you know, uploading photos of your hive of a frame. Is this a queen cell? People are gonna keep asking chatbots. Google When you Google something, it gives you AI mode before anything else.

39:38 Um it's clear things are clearly moving in that direction. And uh I there's pros and cons to that, obviously. The main one I see is how much it erodes community. And AI in general, this is one of my biggest concerns, is how much we keep trusting or or investing in these relationships with chatbots as mentors in new hobbies, as therapists in some cases, as we We go there first to get answers that rather than going to our bee clubs, investing in a mentor-mentee relationship, beekeeping is very hands-on. And The best way to learn it is to dive into a hive with someone more experienced than you.

40:21 And I think this is just a continuation of that spectrum of uh in person to YouTube to AI chatbots and we need to be uh cognizant of of nurturing real relationships in the real world in our hobbies that we're doing I know that there's a there's a real need when you're in the B yard and you find something that doesn't match what you expected. And sometimes when you, you know, reach out to your mentor they're not there, right? You they can't always be there. I've I've picked up so many phone calls of of a distressed beekeeper in a in a bee yard and it does make all the difference because you need a solution right now.

41:04 And so So it's it's interesting because it does serve that purpose, but the problem is, and I've I haven't tested this, like just how good is that that chatbot in the bee yard. And and maybe they're great, but I know that just in some of the image identification, it's it's not a hundred percent. And so so that it's It could get you someplace you don't need to go. Yes. But also I think holding the bar at a hundred percent is also kind of missing the point. So when I started beekeeping as a nervous teenager My beekeeping buddy was my grandpa, who was very interested in beekeeping.

41:44 I think his brother might have kept bees, but he's just having him there as I'm a new beekeeper, nervous, the queen flew out of the cage and I, you know, I'm starting to panic. Having just another level-headed person there was was amazing and helpful. And so when you look at self-driving cars, humans aren't perfect. They're not 100% good drivers. And AI isn't good either. Or AI isn't perfect either But the metric isn't necessarily is AI perfect, therefore they can drive. It's are they producing fewer crash rates? Are they safer than a human driver? So that threshold of of adoption of this technology isn't perfection, isn't AI is always right.

42:30 And when you work with a mentor, they're more experienced than you, but they're not always right either. one of the beekeeper I also that I bought my bees from and gave me advice, I started beekeeping putting Terramycin in my hives every year because he was that kind of beekeeper in that era, which was common and that looking back was not good advice at all. So That's a really good point, is that the last thing you can go for and beekeeping is perfection anyway. You know, I mean you're always going to have that variability and You're always going to be surprised and that's why we're keeping bees. Part of that. and some would tell you that even bees themselves aren't perfect because not every colony survives a winter in the wild.

43:11 So Trying to find perfection in an imperfect system is difficult. I can't believe how quickly time is flying and I did want to save just before While we have a little bit of time left, you've worked on your own record keeping app that you've been playing with? Yeah, so I've been uh building something call I call Hive Scribe. And it focuses on a more open-ended note taking for beekeeping. As I've surveyed and talked with beekeepers about how they take notes, a lot of them are rotating bricks, putting pins and stuff. And I love that system. It's elegant. That's great if you use it. Um and so I feel like a lot of people think a beekeeping app is to replace those systems.

43:55 And I wanted to work with those systems. Use these. this high-bandwidth data collection of of talking while you keep ease and make it work alongside those more traditional note-taking methods. And so yeah, I have a project called hive scribe. com where I'm still elf it's probably more accurate to say alpha testing. It's still even though I've been at it a long time. But I'm focusing making I'm focusing on making it easier to capture notes, unstructured notes, and then get it to your computer where you can do whatever you want with it. keeping the beekeeper in control of their notes, how they're shared, what they do with them, how they structure them. The issue I ran into with so many note-taking apps is them imposing their form, you know uh five-star brood rating or whatever and none of them get it quite right and I as I built my own record keeping form-based thing, I found I just use the open-ended notes all the time.

44:51 I would skip half the form and just write what I wanted to write. And now with AI, I think that's an amazing time to easily do that and easily look back through it. I think the the problem with forms is that the form in your head changes as the season progresses. And I don't care about one question maybe in the spring, but I really care about care about it in the fall or it just and so I can see where notes are very timely to where you are in the management season. The closest I get is I will take a video of after management, I'll go through the yard and then I have to remember what's going on with each colony. So if I'm at fifteen I might be in trouble.

45:31 But the bricks help me re remember that, oh yeah, there's a there's a queen situation or something like that going on. But are you are you starting and stopping with each colony in your system? I uh yes, so I'm I'm pivoting towards hardware because phones still are so distracting and cumbersome to use in a in an apiary setting, uh, with a veil on. the unlock method. So this winter I'm focusing on trying to make more of a two-way radio form factor where you scan a tag, record a 10-second clip, and walk to the next hive. And trying to streamline capture. So note-taking is actually multiple steps of capturing, organizing, reviewing, and splitting those up and focusing on the capture first.

46:16 and then developing or even letting communities develop tools to comb through your notes and structure them the way they are. But I think the missing layer is Maybe even a hardware level of making capture work when you're wearing uh your beekeeping gear. So Would you come back and talk to us more when you get a little bit further down this road and talk to us about Hive Scribe and maybe even your device you'll call Scribble or something? I'm not sure what you'll call My point is about AI and technology. They're just tools to help facilitate the beekeeper. There's a bigger question that we don't have time for of what is happening on the frontier of AI, of them growing beyond tools And we I'm that's way beyond the scope of this podcast, but I think there are some there are some levels of AI that are tools that m that create a lot of potential benefits for beekeepers and enhancing their memory and their organization.

47:12 Yeah. We're all very we're all f very familiar of standing in a bee yard sweating to death. Trying to hold a million different variables in our head and being able to offload some of that memory, some of that information you need to triage, I think is has greatly improved my beekeeping as I embrace some of those tools Thank you, Joe, for being here. We look forward to talking to you more down the road and seeing you at future shows. I'll make sure to watch for you. Make sure you you know kick me out of it. I'll stop by him. I will. Yeah. Sure. Well thanks a lot, Joe. It's been a pleasure. Oh, I pleasure. Thank you so much, Joe. Excuse me, uh just one minute, Becky, while I type this into chat and ask chat how I can Now this is really interesting.

47:59 So you're gonna replace me with the AI chatbot who doesn't interrupt us much. Well you know that would be interesting. We oughta we oughta play with the Doing a whole whole show with AI voices. I think that's a good way to lose listeners. So Oh yeah, sorry about that. You know, if you ever feel like we have too many listeners Okay, maybe it maybe I'll sound smarter with a British accent, so maybe we could talk about like switching it out a little. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. This is really fascinating. The use of AI And beekeeping, I mean it's there and it's just gonna be there more. And I think the sooner beekeepers are able to f incorporate into their beekeeping, I think it'll be very helpful.

48:44 It's not the answer to everything. It's just another tool. I like that assessment. I also think that Even if beekeepers are listening to this going, oh my gosh, I don't want to hear about AI. I think that it's important, as as Joe mentioned, as you said, is that AI is a tool that new beekeepers use. And I hear Kaman Reynolds say we have to meet beekeepers where they're at and so the truth is that this is where a lot of beekeepers are going to be at. And so if we want to continue to help train beekeepers to be successful, understanding the tools that they're using, it's it's pretty important and and this is one of them that can go really, really well or it can go in the other direction.

49:30 And I'm excited to learn more about beekeepers who are using AI. I've I've I've heard from a couple. I'm really thinking that we're gonna keep getting a better understanding of just how important this tool is and also how It's used. That about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you stream the show. Even better, write a quick review. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab on the top of any page. We want to thank Betterbee, our presenting sponsor, for their ongoing support of the podcast.

50:15 We also appreciate our longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their support in bringing you each week's episode. And most importantly, thank you for listening and spending time with us. If you have any questions or feedback, back just head over to our website and drop us a note we'd love to hear from you thanks again everybody