Venom Collection with Whale Labs' - James Watts (S4, E32)

Today, we welcome James Watts from Whale Labs, in Australia. Whale Labs works on a variety of research projects, but today we talk with him about the honey bee venom collection and the commercial value of that venom. Whale Labs has developed a honey bee venom collector that is easy to use, does not harm the bees, and makes collecting bee venom fast, easy, safe and very profitable. Moreover, regular collections do not harm the hive, nor reduce honey production.

The collector consists of a glass plate placed in at the entrance of the hive. Alarm pheromone is administered near the entrance of the hive to draw bees out of the hive. When bees start walking on the glass plate, embedded wires in the plate are made to pulse, or vibrate, which irritates the bees, that then sting the glass plate, ejecting venom. The barbed sting does not catch on the plate, so when the bees are empty of venom, they quit and return inside.

The venom crystalizes and is easily gathered by scraping it off the glass plate.

Raw venom in this form can be sold for $80 - $100 per gram. However, if it has the various components extracted, using an HPLC and a mass spectrometer (together valued at somewhere near $100,000), the principle component of this that is used in cosmetics and elsewhere, has a value of somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500/microgram, and one gram of venom contains about 200 micrograms of this particular valuable component.

Whale Labs sells collectors, provides technical support, and the market for the collected products. Visit them at www.Whalelabs.com/au.

Listen today. This could be your next profit generator from your operation.

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Links and websites mentioned in this podcast:

• Whale Labs - https://www.whalelabs.com.au/

• Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - https://www.honeybeeobscura.com

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Podcast music: Young Presidents, "Be Strong"; Musicalman, "Epilogue". Original guitar background instrumental by Jeff Ott

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