Beekeeping Today Podcast

For this episode, we invite back our regular regional beekeepers to sit down with us and discuss how their season went, what surprises they had, what worked, what didn't and what they were planning for in 2022. In their discussions with each other, they talked about making comb honey, mead, honey prices in their area, swarm preventions techniques, and regional varroa populations. Mark Smith is fro...

In this episode, we talk with Jonna Sanders about AŽ hives (NA Beekeepers say "AZ". We learn today that it correctly pronounced "AH-shah". Jonna is a lifelong AŽ Hive beekeeper and sells AŽ hives in the US. Today we talk with her in depth on how beekeepers manage these hives. We talked with Regional Beekeeper, Paul Longwell back in May as part of our Five-Part Series on Different Hive Types,  wher...

Imagine a completely automated beekeeping operation. Well, BeeWise has created the Bee Home, housing 24 colonies that is a solar powered, insulated, and completely automated for every beekeeping management task. Saar Safar, our guest today, was approached by a beekeeper that had a rough idea of what he wanted, and Saar put his own skills at mechanical and digital automation to work and BeeWise cam...

In this episode, we talk with Steve Repasky about his book, Swarming Essentials , published by WicWas Press in 2014. Steve is in the middle of updating his book and we found him ready to talk about swarming in general, and what's new in the world of swarms that he's putting in his next edition. Basically, the biology of swarms hasn't changed much, although there seems to be an uptick in fall swarm...

Today, we talk with Dara Scott of Advanced Science out of Galway, Ireland, makers of HiveAlive. Off the west coast of Ireland grows a variety of see borne plants, commonly called sea weeds, that have evolved defenses against their biotic pests that live in the ocean. Bacteria, antifungal organisms and other biotic pests are well controlled by these seaweeds. Farmers have taken advantage of the def...

This week we talk with researcher and author, David Aston about his book, Good Nutrition, Good Bees. It's exciting to see how much information on honey bee nutrition is becoming available. This is happening as both new research and looking at existing research in a new light. David Aston, and his coauthor and wife Sally Bucknall, have focused on presenting much existing information, along with som...

Today we talk with Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman. Gloria is the Research Leader at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona. Gloria and the researchers there are involved in several projects, but today we talked to her about just two that are both new and promising for beekeepers and their bees. Modeling honey bee nutrition requirements on a seasonal basis is an area that has not recei...

Today, we pick up on the third installment of our exploration of the Honey Bee Health Coalition's programs as we talk with Pete Berthelsen. Pete runs the Bee and Butterfly Habitat Fund, a non-profit organization working to improve the habitat for all bees and butterflies, anywhere people can make it happen. They have projects in 12 states and are looking to get as many more as they can. They work...

What on earth is a microsponge ? And what do beekeepers do with them? In this episode, we talk with James Webb, CEO, and Nate Reid, Operations Manager at Beemmunity Labs on the exciting research and product development underway. They fill us in on a very creative way that our honey bees can now manage exposure to common agricultural pesticides. They have created a microparticle that is composed of...

Jerry Hayes' journey to become the current Editor of Bee Culture magazine makes him uniquely qualified to lead the A.I. Root Company's 149-year-old Magazine for Beekeepers. He started as a high school teacher in Georgia, but soon found that was not what he wanted to do, so he left that and began working in the plastic industry. That's where he met his first beekeeper and started this journey. He w...

Eugene Makovec has been Editor of the American Bee Journal for only a short time and isn't well known in the Beekeeping world.  He is working to change that. He grew up helping his father keep the family's bees, so has a good background in the craft. He spent time building his career for a few years after graduating with a journalism degree, but when he came back to bees when his father was around...

On today's episode, we welcome back friend of the podcast, James Wilkes, beekeeper, professor and Founder of HiveTracks. HiveTracks continues to evolve and grow from the 'simple' 2008 technology platform focused on recordkeeping for the beekeeper to an entire ecosystem of management decision making tools. In past episodes staring with Episode 007 we talked with James about the ' computerized hive...

In this episode we talk first with Molly Martin, the coordinator of Bee City USA, and Bee Campus USA, both supported by the Xerces Society. The Xerces Society is as Pro Pollinator as any group can get, there's no doubt about that. Of course, our honey bees are probably the best-known pollinators, but there are thousands more out there – other bees of course, but butterflies, birds, bats, beetles,...

Max Cherney is Director of Operations at Nectar Technologies and Dr. Rae Olson is a postdoctoral researcher at Washington State University. Together they work with Precision Beekeeping in Quebec, Canada developing a data driven app for commercial beekeepers to use to seasonally track not only individual colonies but entire beeyards, with each colony having an individual identity within that beeyar...

In this episode, we talk with Ben and Kimberly Carpenter of Hungry Bear Farms, current owners of Ross Rounds Honey Supers and Sundance Pollen Traps. Ross Rounds Honey Supers were created by Tom Ross several years ago, then the business was purchased by Lloyd Spears, who then developed the Sundance Pollen trap to increase his business. In 2017 he sold his business to Ben and Kimberly Carpenter, who...

In this episode we talk with Dr. Gene Kritsky, who has authored or edited 10 books and over 250 papers on subjects as diverse as entomology, Egyptology, evolution, history of science, dinosaur biology, insect poetry and insect mythology. The Tears of Re: Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt is one of his Egyptology stories in a book, and Periodical Cicadas: The Brood X Edition was released this spring, jus...

We continue this week exploring the work of the Honey Bee Health Coalition we started on the March 29th, Season 3, Episode 44, with Matt Mulica . The HBHC has several goals, tasks and programs it is pursuing and the one we are exploring today, with Dr. Dewey Caron, Representing the Western Apiculture Society and Mary Reed, Texas Apiary Inspector and Secretary to the HBHC organization. Together the...

Dr. Geoffrey Williams and Dr. Nathalie Steinhauer join us in this episode to discuss the just released survey of colony losses between April 1, 2020 and April 1, 2021 conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership, BIP. The numbers are not getting better after 15 years. In fact, beekeepers across the United States lost 45.5% of their managed honey bee colonies last year. The survey asks beekeeping oper...

Returning to join us in this episode is Tammy Horn Potter. (She originally visited us back in Season 2!) Not only is Tammy the State Apiary Inspector for Kentucky, but she is also an accomplished author. She has just finished her fourth book entitled, " Work I Knew I Must. Reminiscence of Forty-One Years of Factory Life." Jane Cole worked for the A. I. Root Company for 41 years, starting when A.I....

What better way to start Pollinator Week than to get the latest info on everything Pollinator from Kelly Rourke, Executive Director of Pollinator Partnership, and Miles Dakin, the Coordinator of Pollinator Partnership's Bee Friendly Farming program. This week's program also marks the beginning or Beekeeping Today Podcast's FOURTH year! Our first program way back then was with members of the Pollin...

Charlotte Ekker Wiggins, author of two books about beekeeping and beekeepers, is our guest today. Her first book, Bee Club Basics, Or How To Start A Bee Club , dealt with managing teachers mentors, students, classes and the basics of organizing a start-up beekeeping organization. Her second book, just recently released is A Beekeeper's Diary. Self Guide To Keeping Bees .  [ Late breaking news! " A...

In this episode, we talk with Margaret Lombard (CEO) and Catherine Barry (Dir. of Marketing) from the National Honey Board. The NHB is an organization designed with the express purpose of marketing honey. There are 10 Board Members, consisting of Honey Packers, Honey Importers, beekeepers and Sioux Honey who handle more than 250,000 pounds of honey/year and who pay a penny and a half/per pound for...

Today, we invite Dr. Robert E. Page, Jr.  to the podcast to talk about his research on honey bee genetics and his new book, The Art Of The Bee. Shaping the environment from Landscapes to Societies. Rob is an Emeritus professor at both Arizona State University and The University of California, Davis. He has published hundreds of research papers, and he is the author of two other books. And he is th...

This is without doubt, the most technologically advanced, commercially available, honey bee hive monitoring system developed so far. Mike James has a background in home automation and when he started keeping bees not all that long ago, a first thought was supporting his package bees with some insulation. And, to no one's surprise, his insulated package colonies took off faster than those in his re...

In Part 4 of our 5-part series on hive types other than the standard Langstroth, we talk with Paul Longwell about the AZ Hive. Paul has been keeping bees for quite a few years. He's a Master Beekeeper and has bees in Langstroth hives, top bar hives and has a shed with his AZ Hives. AZ hives, if you're not familiar with them were developed in Slovenia, which has a long history with bees and beekeep...