Apimondia: The World's Bee Meeting
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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! 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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Beekeeping along Canada's Sunshine Coast
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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. Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your...
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Chile for Avocado Pollination, Queen Production, and Adventure
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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...
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Buckwheat: Our Favourite August Honey Plant
About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
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...
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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]
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]