Beekeeping Today Podcast

This week, we talk with Dr. Jamie Ellis, from the University of Florida about The BEEMD website, the UoF Bee Lab, Coloss, research, teaching and his extension work! All his work is centered on honey bees, is beekeeper driven and embraces collaboration. Dr. Ellis has a brand-new bee lab with over 50 grad, undergrad and volunteer students conducting research. In addition, he is working on the U of F...

In this episode, guest co-host and 2 Million Blossoms editor Kirsten Traynor joins Jeff and Kim with her Dr. Meghan Milbrath interview. Meghan applies her epidemiology background in her work with honey bee diseases as an academic specialist at Michigan State University. Megan started keeping bees over 20 years ago with her father and continues today at The Sand Hill Apiary a small livestock and qu...

Ask beekeepers and you will hear many different opinions on Russian Honey Bees. Mostly, they either love them, hate them or know nothing about them.  In this episode, we go directly to the US source of these bees with Dr. Tom Rinderer and Steve Coy. Tom was instrumental in the early days of the research resulting in the introduction of this line of honey bee to the US by visiting Russia to find th...

Guest co-host and 2 Million Blossoms Editor, Kirsten Traynor and Tucka Saville chat this week, talking about treatment free beekeeping, having bees in Florida and Upstate New York, raising queens with Michael Palmer in Vermont, and working with Sam Comfort in Florida. They discuss raising queens, swarms, making simple, simple hive, being online and the whole community of beekeepers. Tucka is a com...

On this day as the world is celebrating honey bees and all that they do, Dewey Caron, Kim Flottum and Kathy Summers share stories and memories of Ann Harman, a world bee celebrity who passed on May 1. Ann was an exceptional beekeeper, active in honey shows around the world, held key positions in the Eastern Apicultural Society, was a Welsh Honey Judge, and contributed to Bee Culture magazine for o...

This week, get out your traveling bee suits, because we are going to visit three different beekeepers in across the country. This time of the year, beekeepers in the US and northern hemisphere are all very busy, but are they all doing the same? Are they all experiencing the same things? In this episode we set off to find out. We talk with beekeepers from North Carolina, Northeast Ohio and the west...

This episode is our first with guest co-host, 2 Million Blossoms editor, Kirsten Traynor. Kirsten will be our guest co-host on a regular basis bringing us interviews with young and upcoming personalities and researchers in the world of beekeeping. In this first episode, Kirsten introduces us to Sarah Red Laird. Sarah Red-Laird, probably better known as The Bee Girl. She's very visible in the beeke...

Dr. Jeff Pettis left the USDA some time ago to pursue other avenues of research. His current work is studying issues with queens, primarily longevity, affect of pesticides, virus interactions, shipping problems and more. Relatedly, he is working with drones, which of course play a big role in how queens produce. He's looking at sperm issues, affects of pesticides, mating problems, heat stress and...

Fifty years ago today, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, there was a celebration of the very first Earth Day, sponsored by then Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, who had organized the event as a teach-in on campuses across the country. It was scheduled for the weekend between spring break and finals week, always an exciting weekend, with students both excited about spring, and serious abo...

Sit back and listen while Jeff and Kim talk with Kim Eierman, founder of EcoBeneficial, and the author of The Pollinator Victory Garden, How To Win The War on Pollinator Decline with Ecological Gardening. If you've been thinking of starting some plantings for pollinators in your backyard, you couldn't find a better place to gather information on the how, when, where and why of what to plant for al...

Sue Cobey, Tim Lawrence and Steve Sheppard join the podcast this week to discuss their new three-part video series on how to develop an effective and productive honey bee breeding program. Topics discussed in the series include record keeping, drone population, selecting from a large population of colonies, evaluating colonies for specific traits, artificial insemination, developing drone comb and...

The world's largest hornet, The Asian Giant Hornet was discovered in the State of Washington in the fall of 2019. Also known as the Japanese Hornet, the Yak-Killer Hornet or the Giant Sparrow Bee, this ground nesting giant is as big as your thumb, and just loves eating honey bees.  Honey bee larvae that is. It just kills all the honey bee adults in a hive to get to the larvae, leaving behind devas...

In this bonus episode, Jeff and Kim talk about the just announced discovery of a new race of honey bees, uncovered in the Solomon Islands, Apis gigantica-nordquist, on the smallest uninhabited island, Vangunu. Vangunu, the smallest, uninhabited speck of land in the Solomon Islands is the home to one of the largest rats in the world. But it turns out it is also the home to the largest honey bee spe...

This week we meet with Kelly Kulhanek, a BIP Sentinel Apiary Scientist. Since gearing up in 2015, this program monitors colonies in 30 states with over 100 beekeepers. Once enrolled, you'll take samples from your hives and have them tested for varroa, nosema and anything else the BIP people find for over 6 months a year. This is a perfect educational tool for bee clubs everywhere, teaching members...

We've all seen the bottles of Sioux Honey in the grocery store.  Ever wonder how the Sioux Honey cooperative works? Could you join? Would you want to? In this episode, we meet Matt Beekman, a 4000-colony co-op member in California who recently joined Sioux and shares information on this 100-year-old agriculture cooperative. Sioux's 250 or so members produce somewhere around 60 million pounds of ho...

We recently talked with the good folks at ApisProtect, a technology company located in Cork, Ireland and Salinas, CA. Dr. Fiona Edwards Murphy and Dr. Whelan Padraig are the engineers and beekeepers whose ideas and hard work have made this possible. At a high level, ApisProtect technology collects hive data using their sensor is monitored and analyzed remotely using artificial intelligence. Captur...

Welcome to our four-part series on getting started in this fascinating and educational backyard pastime, sideline job, or full time career. All are possible with honey bees. Listen in as Kim Flottum, author and retired Editor of Bee Culture magazine, Dr. James Tew, author, Bee Culture magazine contributor and retired Extension Specialist in Beekeeping from the University of Alabama and Ohio State...

Welcome to our four part series on getting started in this fascinating and educational backyard pastime, sideline job, or full time career. All are possible with honey bees. Listen in as Kim Flottum, author and retired Editor of Bee Culture magazine, Dr. James Tew, author, Bee Culture magazine contributor and retired Extension Specialist in Beekeeping from the University of Alabama and Ohio State...

Welcome to our four-part series on getting started in this fascinating and educational backyard pastime, sideline job, or full time career. All are possible with honey bees. Listen in as Kim Flottum, author and retired Editor of Bee Culture magazine, Dr. James Tew, author, Bee Culture magazine contributor and retired Extension Specialist in Beekeeping from the University of Alabama and Ohio State...

Welcome to our four part series on getting started in this fascinating and educational backyard pastime, sideline job, or full time career, sponsored by BetterBee ! All are possible with honey bees. Listen in as Kim Flottum, author and retired Editor of Bee Culture magazine, Dr. James Tew, author, Bee Culture magazine contributor and retired Extension Specialist in Beekeeping from the University o...

In this episode, we talk with Jeremy Burbidge of Northern Bee Books , located in Mytholmroyd, in northern England. Northern Bee Books publishes books on every aspect of bees and beekeeping you can imagine. Jeremy is a retired school teacher and a beekeeper, and has been publishing not only books on bees and beekeeping for over 20 years, but also publishers two beekeeping magazines, The Beekeepers...

January 7 th marked the ribbon cutting ceremony for the newest USDA Honey Bee Research Lab in Davis, California. Drs.  Arathi Seshadri , the lab's Research Leader and  Julia Fine are the initial staff, looking at colony health and stress factors. Dr. Fine joins the this episode to talk about her new role and the mission of the lab. Dr. Fine is more the lab person looking at the effects of nutritio...

Naomi Mark grew up and lives today in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Her mom and dad homesteaded there and raised five kids. Along with the way, he started beekeeping and passed the love of bees to Naomi. Her movie, How To Bee , chronicles a period of three years after Naomi moved back from college, and her learning how to keep bees with her chronically ill father. It is a touching movie about beeke...

Lindsey White and Randi Grout work for Meadville Land Service, Inc., which is a "cousin" company of the Ernst Seed Company out of Cochranton, PA.  MLS specializes in planning, planting and maintaining large scale (multiple acre) pollinator 'gardens'... OK, fields; think corporate grounds and tracts of otherwise unproductive acres. The acreage in and around solar arrays are great opportunities to p...

In this episode, the guys review key podcasts and guests from 2019. Then they take a look at what is planned for 2020.  What were your favorite episodes? Let us know at questions@beekeepingtodaypodcast.com!   ______________ This episode is brought to you by Global Patties ! Global Patties is a family business that manufactures protein supplement patties for honey bees. Feeding your hives protein s...