About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

Season 8 Episode 10: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Left Behind: After the Honey Bee Rapture What happens inside a honey bee hive after a swarm leaves? In this episode of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, Ron Miksha follows the parent colony after half the bees depart with the old queen. The story explores why bees swarm, how many bees leave, what remains behind, why swarm queen cells often produce excellent queens, and how new research on queen-cell architecture suggests that bees do more than feed queens royal jelly - they build specialized royal nurseries. The episode also examines virgin queen piping, queen fights, afterswarms, mating flights, genetic turnover, honey crop losses, and the remarkable resilience of the old hive. Swarming may frustrate beekeepers, but for honey bees it is colony-level reproduction - one of nature's oldest and most successful survival strategies. Recorded in Calgary, June 2026 · Fang, Y. et al. Queen cell architecture shapes honey bee queen development. Nature. 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10534-3. PubMed record: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42236932/ · UC Riverside News. "How honeybees really crown their queens." June 3, 2026. · Chemical & Engineering News. "Queen bees emerge from special wax chambers." June 3, 2026. · University of Florida IFAS Extension. "Swarm Control for Managed Beehives." ENY-160/IN970. · Jim Tew, Bee Culture. "General Honey Bee Swarm Biology and Management (Part 1)." · Thomas D. Seeley and Martin Lindauer traditions on swarm decision-making and nest-site selection, especially as discussed in Seeley's Honeybee Democracy and related American Scientist coverage. · E.O. Wilson's Pulitzer Prize books: On Human Nature (1979); The Ants (with Bert Hölldobler, 1991) · Tom Wenseleers. "Superorganism Revisited." BioScience 59(8), 2009, noting William Morton Wheeler's early use of the superorganism concept. 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 7 Episode 11: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bee Poop, Yellow Rain, and the Bee Gut Honey bees refuse to defecate inside their hive all winter—and when the first warm day arrives, thousands of bees take a sudden cleansing flight. In this episode, we explore one of the stranger realities of beekeeping: the honey bee digestive system and the dramatic spring event known as the cleansing flight. From my snowy backyard apiary in Calgary, Alberta, we begin with the subtle signs of early spring. The sun is higher, the hive entrance warms, and a few brave bees take flight—even when temperatures hover just above freezing. Honey bees spend the entire winter confined inside the hive, eating stored honey but refusing to defecate indoors. Instead, they store waste in their hindgut until a warm day finally arrives. When it does, thousands of bees launch into the air to relieve themselves in spectacular cleansing flights. Today, we'll explore the biology of the bee gut, why hive hygiene is critical to colony health, and what happens when digestion goes wrong through dysentery or Nosema infection. We even take a detour into Cold War history, when mysterious "Yellow Rain" falling over Southeast Asia was eventually linked to mass defecation flights of giant Asian honey bees. Yes, really. Recorded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in March 2026. 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 7 Episode 9: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The Apiary in a Box I had a great chat with Herman van Reekum of Beekeeping Innovations and BeeCube. BeeCube is what it sounds like, a cube of bees, an apiary in a box. We discuss the advantages of the BeeCube as well as new developments that Herman is involved in - a beekeeper's app (Bee the Bee) for recording and analyzing bee colony health and management, and also Global Bee, Digest a Substack newsletter that aggrandizes current news and research in bees and beekeeping. Links for Herman Beekeeping Innovations: https://www.beekeepinginnovations.ca/ BeeCube: https://www.beecube.io/ The Global Beekeeping Digest: https://globalmobility.substack.com/ Recorded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in February 2026. 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 7 Episode 7: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Sylvia Plath, the Beekeeper's Poet Today's podcast is more about Bees and Culture, less about Beekeeping Curiosity. Today, February 11, is the anniversary of the death of a great poet, Sylvia Plath. The daughter of a bee scientist, Sylvia led a short life spent writing about love, loss, disappointment, and nature. Don't skip this episode. You will be surprised. Recorded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in February 2026. 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 7 Episode 5: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Start the Year with New Bees! In this episode, Ron Miksha and his brother Joe McShaw discussed Joe's greenhouse business and beekeeping operations. They covered topics including making beeswax crayons, installing bee packages, and the challenges of wintering bees in northern climates. Joe shared his simple approach to beekeeping, which involves minimal intervention (just 5 trips to the beeyard!). Joe focuses on efficiency rather than detailed management. They also discussed the greenhouse business at Honeymoon Acres, including starting cuttings from around the world and preparing millions of plants for sale. The conversation touched on customer interactions (Joe asked if the customer is always right), the changing workforce, and the potential impact of automation and robots in the future. Ron wants a Robo-suit, Joe wants a full android robot! Joe's greenhouse business: https://honeymoonacres.com/ Recorded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in February 2026. 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 7 Episode 3: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – What's Blooming in January? What's Blooming in January? Not much. Unless you're in the deep south, west coast, or Hawaii. We look at these places and we look at how to feed bees in colder areas. Recorded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in January 2026. 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 7 Episode 1: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Ten bee predictions for 2026 Here we go. I might be wrong more than right, but it's still worth a think. 1. I expect more bees declines, but not kept honey bees. 2. Honey bee colony numbers will surprise researchers. 3. Climate-driven phenological mismatches will dominate ecology news. 4. In the USA, lax rules will allow easier registration of agriculture chemicals, resulting in more pollinator deaths. 5. I predict pollinator restoration projects will be big. 6. I expect a new pathogen jump from honey bees to wild bees. 7. In 2026, I think that there will be bee stories regarding extreme weather. 8. I expect at least one article titled something like "Tiny robots are replacing bees as pollinators." 9. Not a wild prediction, but I think bees will be less common on social media in 2026. 10. Robotic androids will not replace beekeepers in the field during 2026. In 2026, I don't expect to see: Robots lighting smokers Robots reading brood patterns Robots making judgement calls about nectar flows, weather, and beekeeper intuition Or even Robots carrying deep honey supers to the truck Recorded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in January 2026. 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