Talking bees on Dirty Linen with Dani Valent

Dirty Linen · “Laszlo Kun (Beekeeper) — Protecting Our Pollinators.” A conversation between food journalist Dani Valent and BeesFriend founder Laszlo Kun. Lightly edited for reading.

Dani: Hi everybody, you’re with Dani Valent and you’re listening to Dirty Linen. Good on you for coming back — or coming for the first time — for a chat about food. I feel grateful for a lot of things in the food world, but honestly, one of the things I’m most grateful for is bees. Whenever I see a bee, I have to stop and say a little thank you, because so many things wouldn’t be happening in our food system without them. Their pollination is so crucial to our food system and our ecosystems, and they’re just fascinating, wonderful little creatures — and so vulnerable, probably never as threatened as they are now. Today we’re chatting to Laszlo Kun, who knows way more about bees than I do and is passionate about their wellbeing. Laszlo, welcome to Dirty Linen.

Laszlo: Thank you, Dani.

What drew you to bees

Dani: Lovely to have you on the show. What is it about bees that has drawn you in?

Laszlo: Bees are so valuable — everyone’s life depends on their pollination services. But I approached it a little differently. I always loved creatures, and bees especially. Even when I was quite young I’d look at the male bees, the drones — I knew they weren’t going to sting me, and I’d play with them and release them. As I got older, I realised I was spending most of my energy and time working for a paycheck, and I couldn’t really deliver on something that would be important for myself, for my kids’ future, for everybody.

Laszlo: I was buying my honey from a lovely gentleman called Dietmar Klimkeit, who ran a website called Amazing Bees. He was like a lexicon of the bee industry here in Melbourne. I’d chat with him while I picked up my honey, and I realised — okay, that’s something I can probably do. I said to my wife, “Look, I want to do this,” and in 2020 I decided to jump in. From there on, no looking back. I put in as much effort as a full-time job — after hours, then weekends — because every day I see the impact of the work, and the way I try to express the problem the bees are facing. The message is getting through. It’s small progress, but I see progress, and that keeps me going.

The day job: supercomputers at CSIRO

Dani: You mentioned a full-time job — you run national-scale AI supercomputers for CSIRO. That seems very different from the bee world. What is your day job?

Laszlo: I love working for CSIRO, because that’s another thing with a big impact — we can deliver something for the whole nation. If you asked me, “Would you like to work for somebody else who’d give you a better salary, better conditions?” — I’d say no. I want to do something with my time that creates good, and that’s how I see CSIRO: delivering science for the nation. As a technical expert in supercomputers for more than a decade, I can help my scientist colleagues run their simulations and discover something useful for the whole nation. And it’s exciting watching the technology move. What I love most is: okay, we have a problem, it takes three days to run — can we make it run faster? Yes. You optimise it to run in less than two hours, and you see the spark on the scientist’s face. “Is it possible?” Yes — but we have to optimise your code for these platforms. And everybody’s so happy.

Why invest so much in bees

Dani: It sounds like much more than working for a paycheck. You took some equity out of your house to invest in the world of bees. A lot of people, when they think of bees, maybe remember a time they got stung — bees don’t always have such a cosy reputation. Tell us why you love them enough to do that.

Laszlo: First of all, they’re so precious. The myth is that bees can be a little defensive — and I agree, bees are like humans. Every hive has a different temperament. Some aren’t as patient when you open the hive and work with them; they’ll give you signals — “we’re not happy you’re here, please close the lid and leave us to our work.” Others just let you carry on with your management duties. But either way, whatever the personality, they’re important. So I don’t hold a grudge that I got stung — and 99% of the time it’s my fault, because I was rushing, or I squished a bee while holding a frame.

Laszlo: The other thing — and I don’t know if you or your audience have experienced this — when you open a hive on a sunny day, you start smelling the honey, the honeycomb, the brood, the propolis, all of it in the air. They say there are around 400 different volatile compounds in that air. It’s so relaxing, with the hum of the bees. There are papers on how that sound reduces your stress levels. In Europe there are little huts where they do therapy with the bees — you breathe in the hive air, and it can help you with different things. So it’s not only pollination. It’s the way the bees build the hive and the society. I never saw a bee that focuses on itself — of course I don’t speak bee language, but the way I interpret it, they’re all working for the good of the colony. None of them thinks, “I’m going to keep something for me.” I always say we should learn more about how bees run their society. If we could copy some of those ideas, it would be so much better for everyone on this planet.

Dani: I love the idea of bee therapy. And there’s so much we could learn from the way they work communally toward a common goal. So tell us about your setup — what do you actually do?

The rescue setup

Laszlo: I started in 2020, and at the time I did my research, because I knew this would be a long-term journey and I wanted to do the best for the hives I rescue. I opted for really well-insulated boxes — 40 millimetres, instead of the standard 22-millimetre timber. It’s EPS, compressed polystyrene, and it gives six or seven times better insulation to protect the bees against the elements. That has an added benefit: the bees don’t have to work so hard to maintain the temperature inside, so they can focus on their wellbeing, healing, and building up their numbers.

Laszlo: I also built a few different ways of collecting swarms. I use a big water-cooler bottle — I cut the top, put a thread in the bottom, and extend it on a pole up to six metres, so I can reach swarms that everybody would say are too hard. You just have to have the technology. And I built a bee vacuum, because you can’t buy that kind of tool in a shop — you have to be a bit inventive. With that I’ve saved a lot of bees, specifically ones in a wall, under floorboards, or in a chimney that’s too hard to reach. It takes hours, gently sucking up the bees without destroying their wings, and eventually they end up in the box. Then you put them safely into a proper hive and let them build their numbers again. I’ve got other tools too — an endoscope with a camera, so I can look inside a wall, and a thermal camera, so I can see through plasterboard exactly where they are. I don’t have to smash the whole wall — I open exactly the right spot and minimise the damage for the property owner.

Where honey comes in

Dani: So someone has bees that have made a home in their house, they call you, you remove the bees — but the bees stay alive, and you take them somewhere they can replenish and do their bee business. So where does honey come into what you do?

Laszlo: When you get a hive as a swarm or a nest, even in the best year that colony takes a full cycle to build up its numbers. If there aren’t enough forages, it’s almost impossible to make excess honey. The best you can hope for in that first season is that the swarm builds up, survives, collects enough honey for itself and overwinters — but it won’t produce anything for you. Nature and the weather are very hard to predict. There are seasons when even the production hives don’t make enough for themselves, and last season was exactly like that. You just have to live with it, because for me, keeping bees is more about the bees than the honey.

Laszlo: The philosophy is: every beehive has to have its own honey first. If a hive produces excess, and I have another apiary that isn’t producing enough even for itself because the weather was poor, I take the excess frames — not one or two, but hundreds — put them in my car and spread them over the apiary that’s short, because you have to leave at least ten frames of honey to overwinter a colony. Whatever remains after that, I give something back to the landowners who let me keep bees on their property as a thank you, and then whatever’s left, I extract and keep for my customers.

Commercial beekeeping and monoculture

Dani: So are bees a kind of commercial livestock? Most people keep bees to harvest and sell honey, or they truck them around to agriculture — nut farms, all kinds of crops — to be used as pollinators. What do you think of that way of using bees?

Laszlo: It’s a necessity for some crops to have pollinators brought in to help the flowers set and produce more fruit. But you can do crop pollination in many different ways. I’m not trying to talk badly about commercial beekeepers, but some treat bees like units — they don’t feel that these are also living creatures. It becomes, “I’m going to lose 30% of my colonies, I’ll remake them, it doesn’t matter, I’m just looking at the bottom line.” And the whole concept of bringing bees in for a quick pollination and then moving to the next site should be looked into, because monoculture pollination — keeping bees foraging on the same plant for two or three weeks — just isn’t healthy for them. They need a variety of nectar, pollen, amino acids, flavonoids, micronutrients. Otherwise their nutrition is poor, their immune system is weaker, and they’re more susceptible to pests and diseases.

Laszlo: The bigger problem is that it becomes a focal point for spreading disease — as unfortunately happened with crop pollination and the spread now across Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT. So you have to be careful how you do it. It’s not about the dollar figures you gain; it’s about the impact you can have on everybody else around you. And it’s a cultural thing — some people inherited the business over multiple generations and say, “Dad did it the same way, why should I worry?” But times are changing. You have to evolve, be more in tune with your surroundings, appreciate the cleanness of the environment, and try to keep it that way.

Varroa mite: what it is

Dani: You touched on Varroa. People might have read about it in the news — it’s been a big focus for the whole food system. Can you tell us what Varroa mite is, and how it affects bees?

Laszlo: Varroa mite is a small parasite that gets into the hive and takes resources out of the bees’ bodies. By biting the bees it also spreads viruses — it’s a vector for viral spread. In springtime, as the bee population grows, the Varroa population grows just as rapidly. If you’re not working to reduce their numbers in the hive, it has a detrimental effect on the health and the number of bees inside. The experts say that in just two years, if you’re not treating, it can cause a colony collapse.

Laszlo: The biggest problem is that we never had mites — Australia was the last continent without them, up to 2022, when Varroa arrived at the Port of Newcastle, that’s the story at least. Since then it’s spread through New South Wales, now Victoria, and now into suburban Melbourne, to lots of local beekeepers. Especially the people who were just looking for the honey — “where’s my honey?” — and then say, “oh, there are no bees.” If you’re not going to take the effort to understand bee biology, the threats, the diseases, and to implement some management practices, you’re going to lose your colonies. So it’s so important to minimise the damage, invest in your education, and help others. If you know a beekeeper, explain the methods, the techniques — chemical or non-chemical treatments, whatever’s in your arsenal. Spread the word, help others. That’s what I’d suggest.

The surveillance tool

Laszlo: And — a little self-promotion, hopefully you don’t mind — I created a tool, because I saw a real gap around measuring the efficacy of the treatment you applied. It’s an app: you put your data in, and on the spot it gives you an answer, in plain terms, about whether your previous treatment was efficient or not. Collectively, it also records which treatment methods people used, and links each method to how effective it was. The other hope is that it can eventually point to some queen lines that keep Varroa levels lower in the hive — the hygienic trait. That would be the holy grail. But to find one or two of those queens, you need thousands and thousands of colonies tested and validated. It’s very hard.

Laszlo: I kept thinking, how can we do this at scale? I have colonies, someone else has colonies, but one or two beekeepers isn’t enough. So this is a free app — I built it on my own, in my own time. It’s a working prototype, and I’m actually going to talk about it at our beekeepers’ club on Thursday. I’ve approached lots of organisations and there’s some interest. The only thing is, people have to make the effort to spend a couple of minutes putting their data in. But if we had thousands and thousands of data points, I could print out a map showing what’s happening all across Victoria — which at the moment we don’t know. Right now we’re just hoping the treatment works, and we know at least two synthetic chemical groups are already not working. If the others aren’t effective either, we’re just putting chemicals into a hive with no return — and worst case, the bees still suffer. So I want to build a model that clearly shows what’s going on every quarter, or more often if I have more data. That’s also a way to talk with other beekeepers about revisiting their methods, because the data shows what isn’t working.

Treatments

Dani: It’s an amazing tool. So what are some of the treatments — do you sprinkle a powder in the hive, or what do you do?

Laszlo: There are different methods. Some chemicals come as a strip you put on top of the frame. Some you vaporise — oxalic acid, for example. Some come as a pad you place on top of the frame. Different chemicals have different requirements — that pad can’t be used in high temperatures, in hot weather — and it’s recommended to rotate the chemicals. The most important thing is to check the mite numbers before and after, otherwise you’re just blindly throwing chemicals in without knowing what’s happening. That rigour wasn’t there before, when you were just doing small things for the hive. Now it has to be well documented — you need an agenda: this is my period for these checks, and at that time you go in, do the checks, and document them. Otherwise your bees will suffer and you’ll be like a headless chook, trying different things and getting nowhere.

Dani: If I see a bee buzzing around my garden, can I look and tell whether it’s affected by Varroa mite — can you actually see it on the bee?

Laszlo: That would be a very last stage. You’d see a brownish, one-millimetre, semicircular little insect on the bee, and if it’s a very high infestation you could see it in the hive — but that’s very bad. By seeing one bee, there’s only a small chance you’d spot Varroa on the bee itself.

Dani: Disgusting little creatures. People spoke about it as inevitable that it would find its way to Australia, but it’s just such a bummer that it got here.

Laszlo: It’s unfortunate — but every problem is an opportunity. It’s a chance to reflect on our skills and our scientific studies, and potentially develop something in treatment methods or ways of coping with Varroa. It was inevitable, so now we just have to adjust.

The other treasures of the hive

Dani: Laszlo, people know about honey, and we’ve learnt from you how cute bees are — but tell us about some of the other treasures bees are responsible for.

Laszlo: There are treasures you only see as a beekeeper. If you graft a queen, and you saw that queen emerging from a cell, and you watched her grow the hive — that’s something beautiful. But as an everyday consumer, people mostly know the honey, which comes in different forms. Honey can start to crystallise after a while, so you can make a creamed honey, or keep it runny. Then there’s the honeycomb itself — the wax and honey structure together, in comb format. Then propolis, which is tree resin the bees collect to support their immune system and keep the hive clean — it’s antimicrobial and antifungal, a very good natural resource for different remedies, though I won’t go into that, I don’t want to get in trouble.

Laszlo: Then, obviously, beeswax — it’s just beautiful, the block that builds up. I use it for cosmetics, and I make hand-dipped candles out of it. I want to treasure the product of the bees, and specifically the beeswax, into something unique and handmade — not just poured into a mould, because that would feel almost disrespectful of the hard work the bees put in. Some books say a beehive has to eat eight kilograms of nectar to produce one kilogram of beeswax, which is a huge effort. And only bees at a certain stage of their life cycle — roughly 15 to 20 days old, if I remember well — can create the wax pellets; older or younger bees can’t. Other bees then chew it and form those hexagons. It’s a whole teamwork. It’s called festooning — they hold their legs together like a chain, and by doing that they measure the gaps and the space, working out how to build the hexagons. Nobody ever taught them; they just know.

Laszlo: The other day I joked with my son that we hold ourselves to be the most intelligent creatures on this planet — but the bees already know what to do when they’re born. Nobody tells them. It doesn’t take them a year to start walking; they just know how to fly, how to tend to others, how to help the queen, how to build and forage. Their sense of purpose is just amazing.

Dani: Not only do they know what to do, they just do it — and then they do the next thing they need to do. I can understand the endless fascination. What about bee bread — what’s that?

Bee bread

Laszlo: Bee bread is something very unique — it’s anaerobically fermented pollen. Imagine the sauerkraut of the beehive. Pollen is perishable, so to keep it longer and make it easier to digest, the bees create bee bread — layers and layers of different pollen, pressed in. When a bee brings in nectar, there’s a recipient bee in the hive that takes it from the forager’s honey stomach and puts it into a cell to start drying into honey. But with pollen, a specific bee goes into the hive and deposits it, taking the pollen balls off the baskets on her legs and pressing them into a cell, using her head to press them in — creating different layers. If you take out a bee-bread capsule and look carefully, you’ll see different shades — yellow, brownish, maybe orange, maybe pale.

Laszlo: Bee bread is so important for bee development, because to secrete royal jelly the bees have to eat bee bread — the glands in their head won’t be stimulated by anything else. If you have bee bread, you can raise bees, because every larva up to three days old eats royal jelly, and the queen eats royal jelly her whole life. It’s an amazing substance, with a slightly bitter taste. To quantify it: in a hive you have a brood box at the bottom, then multiple boxes on top which are mostly honey. Bee bread is so rare you might have two or three frames at most, usually less. It’s all used by the bees, so getting access to it is a rare opportunity — I’ve collected it in grams, not kilograms, with a special device. You freeze the whole frame, then push it through a machine that breaks the wax off — when it’s frozen, the wax breaks easily into pieces without destroying the little hexagon-shaped pellets. You end up with a clean product of bee-bread pellets.

Laszlo: I’d read a lot about the effects on the body and thought, that can’t be true. So on my own I took a small teaspoon of bee bread in the morning, with not much other food, and it gave me so much energy — unbelievable. I don’t know exactly what’s in it, but the phytonutrients and amino acids are just great.

Why he loves the work

Dani: There’s so much to be thankful to bees for, Laszlo. Why do you love working with bees?

Laszlo: Because it gives me a purpose — doing something meaningful with my life. And to be honest, it’s not all great and fantastic. I have my days when I think, “I’ve got myself into so much work I don’t even know where to start,” with so many priorities. When you overstretch yourself, you feel stressed. I always say, if I only had ten hives it would be much easier — but then my impact would be less. So long-term, I’d really love to build a community where we can do more than just myself: different people with the same orientation, willing to spend their energy and effort and money on helping nature. And to have scientist colleagues join BeesFriend, or do research on pests and diseases, and things that directly impact the bees and the pollinators. That would be the end game.

Dani: Why do you say “spiritual”?

Laszlo: I don’t want to sound like a cuckoo, but to be honest with you — I’ve even had it come in dreams, guiding me, that I have to do this. There were times I’d say, “I’m not giving up, but I don’t know what to do, there are so many things.” Besides this, I have three kids, so I can’t be a bad parent — I have to put my priorities in the right order. Sunday is for family, but even on Sundays I’d sometimes dip in, and I’d feel bad about it. And in my dreams, a couple of times, something came and said: “You have this goal, you have to carry on — it doesn’t matter how easy or hard it is, that’s your thing to do.” I believe that isn’t just me talking to myself in my subconscious; it’s a guiding voice — that this is my role here, for the next 50 or 60 years, hopefully.

Dani: Beautiful — very inspiring. Every time I talk to someone about bees, I think maybe there’s a little spot in my garden for a hive. I’ll keep thinking about that, but in the meantime I’ll just be grateful for any bees I see. Thank you, Laszlo, for sharing with us today. We’ll put a link to your website so people can check out the app and all the other work you do. And thank you for trusting me with your first podcast.

Laszlo: Thank you. Have a good day — and let’s look after our bees, together.

Dani: Yes, definitely.

This is Dirty Linen, a Deep in the Weeds production, hosted by Dani Valent. Transcript lightly edited for readability; any errors are ours, not the speakers’.