Laura Sends us Deep into the Beekeeping Groove
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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...
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World's Most Interesting Bee Museum - and more...
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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. ...
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Bees, Greenhouses, and 18-hour Work Days
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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 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: This episode was recorded in July 2025. Please...
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Ask Me Anything for July 2025
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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: About Ron Miksha: Finally: email your...
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July's Best Honey Plant
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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...
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Beekeeping on Canada Day
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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: About Ron Miksha: Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: [email protected]
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Slovenia, the Country that Buzzes
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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...
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Late Spring Beekeeping
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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,...
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Judging your Honey
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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...
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Spring Honey Bees
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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...
info_outlineSeason 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: [email protected]