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- What we find when we give bees these fungal extracts
in the laboratory is that each individual bee
on average lives longer.
So it looks like the bees are healthier overall,
their immune system is in better shape,
and they're better able to fight pathogens as a result.
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In trying to figure out more of what's going on,
we've been able to find that these fungal extracts
help bees fight viruses,
and we've also seen it able
to help bees fight gut parasites.
So it looks like there's multiple different things
where the bees are healthier,
and we are just now getting some genetic work
that's showing that different aspects
of the bee immune system are in fact boosted
when the extracts are added to their feed.
- I was growing mushrooms in my garden on wood chips,
the garden giant mushroom,
and I also had two beehives.
And one day in July,
I came out to water my mushrooms in the garden.
I get in the garden,
and I saw my mushroom bed cover with bees.
And I was really surprised.
I look really closely,
and I can see the bees moving the wood chips aside.
And I could see these white threads of mycelium
with little golden dewdrops on them.
And they were like, sipping on these dew drops.
Well, we all grew up with Winnie the Pooh.
We all know that bees would go into hollow logs or trees,
and that bears would go in for the honey,
but no one until me put it together,
apparently, that bees are attracted
to mycelium in rotted wood for immune benefit.
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When my friend Louie Swartzberg came to me
and he was doing a movie on pollination.
He does Disney type movies,
and he told me the bees are really in trouble.
What can you do to help them?
And then I had a waking dream.
Well, when I put all this together,
I had this epiphany of feeding the bees
the same extracts that help the immunity of human cells
resist and reduce viruses.
And so I came up with a citizen scientist
bee feeder called the BeeMushroomed,
or the labyrinthine bee feeder.
There is a maze,
and there's an entry point.
We put the sugar water with the extract in a jar
that then trickle feeds
into this well that's in the center.
But the bees in order to get to the well,
have got to go around four or five turns,
and then the bees then can drink the extract.
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I'm happy to help the world
and citizen scientists bring this into being,
because we're all breathing the same air.
We're all drinking, essentially, the same water.
And we're all in this very,
very fragile earth ship together.
It's so important that we protect the commons
for our own benefit as well as that of our children.
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