About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

Season 2 Episode 9:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The Shortest Day What do bees do on the shortest day of the year? We take a quick look at the state of affairs of bumble bees, after turning their blood into antifreeze and entering a suspended animation under the snow, and then honey bees, clustered up tightly in a snug bug ball, vibrating their detatched wing muscles. Honey bee winte...

Season 2 Episode 8: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Granulated Honey This episode focuses on granulation, with special attention to four keys for prevention of crystallization in the comb. Some floral types (canola, manzanita, mesquite, cotton) can granulate before beekeepers have a chance to remove and extract the frames. We cover this, some ecology side-issues, and catch the sniffles a...

Season 2 Episode 7:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – About Bees Podcast We begin with a bit of talk about road trips and especially an eleven-hour drive that Ron was preparing to take in September to Val Marie, Saskatchewan, from Calgary, Alberta. Then, we open the mailbox to answer these questions: Can a hive of honey bees be too good for winter? Do I have to wrap hives with insolation...

Season 2 Episode 6: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – What would Plato do with Drones? Ah, yes. Our philosopher-contributor is back. Daniel Miksha shows us how Plato abuses bees by making them into an allegory for the ruthless (but ultimately justified) murder of unproductive members of society. After a brief detour into the early history of Greece and the nation of Georgia, we focus on Pl...

Season 2 Episode 5:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – HiveIQ: A Smart Hive from Australia In this episode, we welcome Victor Croker of Australia's HiveIQ . Victor is a third-generation beekeeper (his grandmother started the business), with 1500 colonies. The bees motivated him and his partners to design a better hive. They wanted something to help honey bees survive Australia's heat as we...

Season 2 Episode 4: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Saskatchewan Honey Crops & Westcoast Canadian Queen Rearing with Steve Clifford Steve Clifford's lifetime among the bees has taken him from North Dakota bee inspector to managing 1800 colonies in Saskatchewan , at the edge of agriculture. He kept bees there for decades, producing two or three-hundred pound crop averages of beautiful whi...

Season 2 Episode 3:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – BeeCube: An Apiary in a Box with Herman van Reekum We discuss an unusual housing concept for honey bees. Our guest, Herman van Reekum, has designed a BeeCube , which can house about 32 colonies of honey bees in standard Langstroth frames. The unit somewhat resembles bee houses used in parts of the Alps but has technology and electronic...

Season 2 Episode 2:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bumble Bees 101 with Mathias Fenton We welcome biology instructor Mathias Fenton of Mount Royal University. He tells us about big bumbling bumble bees. Our chat touches on the relationship between wasps, ants, honey bees and bumble bees. Mathias mentions some of his interesting wild bee observations and we give a shoutout to  iNaturali...

Season 2 Episode 1:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Chief Crowchild and the Bees  Chief Lee Crowchild of Tsuut'ina Nation is a member of a family designated as the Keepers of the Bees. He tells us of childhood summers spent sleeping in a tent that carried the symbol of the bee. But it was not until later in life that he tasted honey from a hive behind his house when he realized how deep...

Season 2 Trailer:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Season 2 Season 2 of About Bees opens today! We look ahead at the next 12 episodes that has guests talking about 300-pound honey crops, helping bumble bees find a home, controlling granulation, beekeeping at Tsuu'tina Nation with Chief Crowchild, raising queen cells on Canada's westcoast, amazing BeeCube technology, and, of course Plato....

Season 1 Episode 12:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bees by the Number In this episode, we manage to jump around the bee world by using the numbers 1, 2, 2-3, 26, 500, 20,000, 45,000, and 50,000 . That's a wealthy range of handsome numbers! One queen? Not always. What about zero queens plus laying workers? Or more than one queen? Did you know that some beekeepers quit running two-queen...

Season 1 Episode 11:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Moving Bees 2 We begin this podcast with the capture of a swarm , with details described in real time. The subject of Hutterites, a Christian religious group, came up when similarities between Hutterite colonies and bee colonies 'splitting' was discussed. Since we are again talking about moving hives of bees this episode, Ron has a ne...

Season 1 Episode 10:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Moving Bees, part 1 Part 1 of Moving Honey Bees. We look at the ways beekeepers have carted their hives on the backs of humans, donkeys, horse-drawn wagons, boats, flat-bed trucks, semi-rigs, and aircraft. We don't neglect to acknowledge the inventors of the palletized migratory beekeeping system, the native bees who became displaced...

Season 1 Episode 9:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Honey Harvest Time After a few minutes pondering how some carpenter ants in Florida choose the profession of surgeon (sawing off sick comrades wounded legs), Bidzina and Ron settle into a honey harvest discussion. This episode is packed with ideas and suggestions that describe four legal ways to harvest honey and one illegal way .  The...

Season 1 Episode 8:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast - Dogs That Smell  We talk with Rose-Anne Bouffard, a bee enthusiast who trains dogs to find and rescue wayward bumblebee nests and to locate colonies with American Foulbrood (AFB).  Dog breeds and their amazing scent sensitivity are discussed. Bloodhounds are best for sniffing out bumblebee nests and honeybee diseases, but that's not wh...

Season 1 Episode 7:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Cameroon to Canada - Patrick's Bee Journey In this episode of About Bees, we are joined by Patrick Tefouet Tonlio, who was an agriculture community organizer and teacher in the African nation of Cameroon. Patrick now lives in Calgary where he keeps honey bees and has been working on farm and bee projects with the Calgary Catholic Immig...

Season 1 Episode 6: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast - Sweet Clover: America's other weed Legal. Illegal. Legal. Illegal again . Sweet clover has quite a history. Introduced into North America from Europe about 300 years ago, farmers were once fined for having it in their fields. It can be used to feed cattle, but improperly stored, it can become a blood thinner and kill cows. On the other...

Season 1 Episode 5: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Some Bee Buzz In this episode, we jump from moving bees from Alberta to British Columbia to examining a recent paper about the ecology of disappearing bee species. Then, of course, we chat about Beyonce and Hex Art. Bidzina describes conditions in British Columbia and why he avoided going farther into the mountains to make fireweed hone...

Season 1 Episode 4: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The Bees' Ears In this episode, we discover that  insects, including bees, can hear . They have three ways of picking up sound – through their antennae, their feet, and through their armour (exoskeleton). Since bees can hear, does music calm the bees and reduce stings? And since bees can hear, does the old tradition of "Telling the Bees...

Season 1 Episode 3: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast - Do Bees Feel Pain? We often expect to be on the receiving end of pain - whether from a broken elbow or from the tail-end of a bee. But what about bees? Do small creatures feel pain? Is it just a matter of defining pain in a way that we can claim bees feel no pain - or that they do, indeed feel pain? Or is the sensation of feeling pain s...

Season 1 Episode 2:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast - Tolstoy and the Robber Bees Leo Tolstoy was a beekeeping fanatic. He even managed to work his bees into  Anna Karenina , as well as War and Peace . In this episode of About Bees, Culture & Curiosity, we take a shallow dive into deep Russian literature, and look at the conflicted life and death of Tolstoy.  Our main focus is the passage...

Season 1 Episode 1: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast - Myths and Legends What we think we know might not be true. Did you know that Einstein once warned us that without bees, humans would go extinct in four years? Did you know that honey bees are going extinct? That archeologists found 3000-year-old honey that was as good as new? That you can survive on a diet of nothing but honey? That whe...

The About Bees, Culture & Curiosity podcast explores the world of bees (and their entomological cousins) with ample attention to culture and the curiosities of the entire insect world.  Bidzina Mosiashvili is a young beekeeper facing the challenges of managing a few colonies and growing a business of bees. He brings fresh, thoughtful insights and questions to our podcast while Ron Miksha is phasin...