About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

Season 5 Episode 12: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The Autumn Flower: Goldenrod. Plus a bonus - the end of human civilization   Goldenrod is the keystone species for plant, animal, and ecological survival in a huge part of North America. It is also suffering from an unexpected problem, which is hurting bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. That's this episode's bonus - the collapse of human civilzation.  Recorded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in October 2025. Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 11: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bright Shiny Bees   Our guest today is Ilan Domnich of the Alberta Native Bee Council. We dig deeply into the care and appreciation of native bees in North America.  Bright green bees, yellow-faced bees, bees that make cellophane (sort of), mine into the sand, plus tiny, tiny bees. Bees that turn their blood into wine? This episode is a trip. We talk about taking care of native, wild bees and helping them help us. Bee hotels? Maybe they do more harm than good. Sticks and leaves? Your excuse to let your garden go wild in the fall. Build your own bumble bee nests? We chat about that, too.  Learn more about wild bees:  Alberta Native Bee Council Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 10: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Apimondia: The World's Bee Meeting     This short introduction to Apimondia will be of interest to all beekeepers, whether attending Apimondia 2025 in Copenhagen or not.  I hope you are among those going to the conference! Apimondia 2025: https://apimondia2025.com/ Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 9: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Beekeeping along Canada's Sunshine Coast      Canada has a sunshine coast. That's where I met up with my friend Steve Clifford. Steve is a honey producer (mostly Himalayan blackberry honey) and he produces and sells queens and nucs. It's a really different part of Canada - a rainforest where it seldom snows, but summers can get hot and sunny.  This episode was recorded in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia, in September 2025.  See Steve Clifford interviewed by Coast Magazine Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 8: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Chile for Avocado Pollination, Queen Production, and Adventure      Today's guest is Francisco Rey, a Chilean beekeeper and avocado farmer. We talk about the country of Chile, Francisco's 43 years of beekeeping, queen breeding, Francisco's friendship with researcher John Kefuss, Francisco's family-run bee farm, avocado pollination, avocado honey, exporting queens, and we talk about why you should visit Francisco in South America.. This episode was recorded in August 2025.  Francisco Rey's Chilean Bee Farm:  www.pacificqueens.com Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 7: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Buckwheat: Our Favourite August Honey Plant      Buckwheat is quirky. Both the pland and the honey. We look at both - plant and honey - in today's podcast. Especially the black, chokingly-strong honey. Buckwheat, though often mistaken for a cereal grain, is actually a member of the Polygonaceae family, kin to rhubarb and sorrel. First cultivated in China more than 6,000 years ago, it spread westward along trade routes and became a staple in Eastern Europe for its short growing season, tolerance of poor soils, and high-protein, gluten-free grain. Farmers turned it into groats, roasted kasha, soba noodles, dumplings, pancakes, and beer. In North America, buckwheat once covered millions of acres, especially in Pennsylvania, New York, and later Manitoba. Today, only about 50,000 acres remain in the U.S., with North Dakota as the largest producer. Farmers planted it as a rescue crop when other fields failed, and its continuous bloom provided nectar during mid-summer gaps. For bees and beekeepers, buckwheat is both boon and bane. Yields could soar to 200 pounds per hive in good years, but hot, dry weather can shut nectar off completely. The honey is almost black, rich in minerals and antioxidants, with a flavor that people either cherish or despise. Folks often describe it as barnyard-like, molasses-like, or medicinal. Culturally, buckwheat honey was prized by Eastern European immigrants and Jewish communities, especially for Rosh Hashanah. Today, production is rare, but the memory and distinct taste linger. I know. I made a few thousand pounds of buckwheat years ago in Pennsylvania and I spill some memories here today. This episode was recorded in August 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 6: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Laura Sends us Deep into the Beekeeping Groove      This wide-ranging beekeeping podcast takes us from Wales to New Zealand and then Alberta, Canada, with beekeeper Laura Barritt. We look at commercial beekeeping in New Zealand and touch on Sir Edmund Hillary, manuka honey, queen breeding, package shaking, honey producing by under supering, migratory beekeeping, favourite honeys, the Bee Cube®, viral 13-year-old harvesting honey in his house, maintaining queen bee lines, aging of beekeepers, fireweed honey production, honey bee adaptaions to new crops, and becoming a commercial beekeeper. Links from this episode: Rata honey in New Zealand Bee Cube®  13-year-old beekeeper Oliver Taylor This episode was recorded in July 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 5: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – World's Most Interesting Bee Museum - and more...       I am just back from a quick trip to central Europe, where I visited bees in Slovenia and family in Hungary. You don't want to miss what this curious beekeeper has to say about what he saw! Among other things,, I explored the world's most interesting beekeeping museum. What would you put into the museum if it were yours? This episode was recorded in August 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 4: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bees, Greenhouses, and 18-hour Work Days      It takes 18-hour workdays to keep a greenhouse that produces 3 million plants a year, and to keep a dozen hives of bees on the side to pollinate a10-acre pumpkin patch. Our guest is Joe McShaw, of Honeymoon Acres in Wisconsin. Joe is Ron's youngest brother, so we have a lot of fun on this episode. We do bees, wintering (or not), raising plants to retail, and we answer that old question, "Why be good?" Visit Honeymoon Acres: https://honeymoonacres.com/ This episode was recorded in July 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 3: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Ask Me Anything for July 2025       Ask me anything.  I start off with a powerful phrase you can always use when a pesky new beekeeper wants advice with their bees. Keep this phrase in your toolkit. Also, just a bit about putting supers on and taking supers off. Summer management questions, answered in this AMA. This episode was recorded in July 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

Season 5 Episode 2: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – July's Best Honey Plant      What's July's best honey plant? In much of the northern hemisphere, if the soil is sweet alkali, the answer is sweet clover.  It's a spectacular honey plant, one of the best in the world, but it originated far away from the western plains. It's invasive. Wild. Part of today's episode considers what this means - native, invasive; old, new; wanted, unwanted. This episode was recorded in July 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net

Season 5 Episode 1: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Beekeeping on Canada Day      It's Canada Day, up Canada way, on the first day of July. We talk bees, sunshine, swarms that refuse to be retrieved, and of course Stompin' Tom Connors. Enjoy, eh? This episode was recorded in July 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 9: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Slovenia, the Country that Buzzes     In preparation for a trip to central Europe, I have been learning about beekeeping in the small country of Slovenia. I always learn a lot about beekeeping by looking at beekeeping in other parts of the world. It’s amazing how many good ideas, and a few bad ones, I pick up this way. Anyway, I wrote a bit about beekeeping in the quaint country of Slovenia, and today I am reading my story to you. One of the first things I discovered during my research, is that the two million people in Slovenia are almost all beekeepers. Or they know a beekeeper. Or they know where to buy good local honey from a beekeeper. With ten thousand beekeepers, that’s a lot more than the number of people keeping bees in many much larger and more populous countries. The country of Slovenia borders on Austria, Hungary, Croatia, and Italy. What a mix! And the scenery goes from ice-capped Alps to Mediterranean seaside. We have a lot of history, culture, and beekeeping to do – so, let’s get going! This episode was recorded in June 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 8: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Late Spring Beekeeping    Rain brings flowers, flowers bring nectar, nectar brings bees, beekeepers make honey. We are getting heavy rains here, so, of course Ron is predicting a big honey flow. This gets Bidzina’s attention. He is thinking about making comb honey with upside-down glass jars, but Ron throws cold water on the idea. Find out why. We discuss the four things to avoid or reduce granulation, before removing the honey as well as after it’s been extracted. These include the fructose/glucose ration, which depends on nectar source. We talk a lot about this and the other factors that contribute to granulation. Listen for number four, you won’t believe it! Bidzina backtracks away from the inverted jars idea and begins to consider comb honey. Marketing an interesting and unusual product, like comb honey, can be difficult so we consider places that he might go with the honey. Bidzina describes a mixed-martial arts competition coming up in Calgary where he will be selling some honey. Conversation shifts to bees, with reference to hives that have multiple swarms and after-swarms, and the potential for a big honey crop in the Calgary area. Next, we consider that most outreach bee presentations are for children. However, Ron spoke to elderly folks this week at two retirement homes. Maybe we are focusing on the wrong groups? Kids don’t vote and few send letters to the government to beg for morsels of help for the bees. The seniors might. Maybe we're not involving them enough. In discussing how senior citizen beekeepers can help, we acknowledge that some old advice doesn’t stand the test of time but other ideas may be forgotten gems. This includes something that Ron learned 50 years ago about treating European Foulbrood. Next, Bidzina shows some craft work. He has been experimenting with attractive wraps that surround a hive all year round, partly as camouflage, partly as a work of art. He wants to put lights on the decorations around the hives. I suggest that he use red light, otherwise bees may be attracted out of the hives at night. This obviously leads right into a discussion about parasites that turn honey bees into light-seeking zombies. This episode was recorded in June 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 7: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Judging your Honey   Today we judge your honey. Not by flavour, but by the tiniest nuances of bottle fill and floating specks of bee smoker ash. Our guide is the accomplished Calgary honey judge, Linda Symmes. If you have ever considered participating in the fine art of preparing for a honey competition, we spill some secrets from the hidden, anonymized world of the judge: what do judges actually look for when they consider your jar for the top prize? Does it pay to bribe the judge? These and other hints and suggestions are on today’s  episode. This episode was recorded in June 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 6: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Spring Honey Bees   Bidzina and Ron talk about the status of their hives, leading to a discussion about dandelion honey, which Ron’s colonies produced in abundance this year. An intense early flow can lead to swarming, which happened to some of Bidzina’s hives. Two migratory beekeeping mishaps are mentioned – one in Oregon, the other in Washington state. Pretty messy. Finally, should you register your bees with the government? And related - do people every level shotguns at bee inspectors? This episode was recorded in June 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 5: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Alberta Native Bees in Trouble   We chat about the troubles facing native bees with Alberta Native Bee Council (ANBC) Executive Director Megan Evans. Pollinators of all sorts are essential to the health and success of our environment. Understanding the habitats and lifecycles of the 371 known species of bees in Alberta is the first step towards ensuring the prosperity of these pollinators. This is part of ANBC's work. Learning about the issues that hinder bee success is necessary before remedies can be found. Megan discusses climate change (bees can’t survive if flowers finish blooming before the bees have raised their brood); habitat loss (due to human encroachment and invasive plant species expanding into native vegetation); invasive species spreading diseases; and the impact of pesticides. To help native bees, there also needs to be enhanced awareness of the difference between wild native bees and managed bees. Among many projects, ANBC is developing a Living Lawns App to help homeowners create or restore native bee habitats – starting with a goal of one square meter (or one square yard) of landscape for the bees. A million homes following this model would add a million square meters (or yards) of living space and floral resources for native bees. We also look at calls to action that everyone can implement: learn the difference between native and managed bees; work on ecological literacy; create habitats for native bees; and get excited (bee watching is an actual event)! Finally, it was reassuring to learn that Megan, who dedicates her work to helping native bees, wasn’t always comfortable around bees. She overcame her reluctance (fear) of bee encounters by becoming curious about pollinators. Listen to this episode to see how that happened! Visit Alberta Native Bees Council to learn more. https://www.albertanativebeecouncil.ca/ This episode was recorded in June 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 4: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Thousands and Thousands and Thousands of Queens   Dedicated to the memory of Florida queen breeder David Miksa  This episode was recorded two days before David Miksa passed away. His son Ted and I chat about this remarkable beekeeping family and about queen breeding in general. We jump right into our conversation, catching up with Ted at the end of a long day of his work on the farm. Among the topics covered are running mating nucs through the hot Florida summer; banking queens in Florida (and how that might work in Canada); queen importation into Canada; the way that inbreeding stock can yield unfortunate surprise results. We note that about 10% of all the managed honey bee colonies in America have queens (or queen cells) that originated at Miksa honey farm in Lake County, Florida - so we talk about the logistics of producing and selling all those queens, the nine stock lines involved and strategies to keep Africanized stock out of those queens. We wrap up noting the importance of nutrition, especially for nurse bees that are feeding developing queen larvae. And the sage advice: “Take care of the bees and they’ll take care of you.” This episode was recorded in May, 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 3: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bee Thievery  Pay close attention and you may pick up a few clues to reduce honey bee hive thefts. Listen even more closely and you may pick up tips on how to steal colonies. But please don't. It's not worth time in the big house. We also chat about the apiary in a box (BeeCube), Apimondia's upcoming conference in Denmark, Ron's queen-rearing presentation for Western Apicultural Society, a scheme to raise queens from one single colony (Ron is a skeptic), and ideas around swapping Canadian bees for southern hemisphere bees once a year. But mostly we talk about a honey bee heist that happened here in Alberta, Canada. This episode was recorded in May, 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 2: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – A Rose among the Bees With Rose, our conversation starts with a bee walking on Ron's neck, progresses to a stash of wax, some bee work, civilization, parasites, and beeswax, beeswax church candles, bees coming to America, mead, monks, America's first pauper (who was a beekeeper), tomato pollination, Rose's training of dogs to find foulbrood, and so much more.  This episode was recorded in April, 2025.  Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.  Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/ Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  ron@aboutbees.net