About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

Season 10 Episode 2: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Why is a Turkey a Turkey?

Why is a bird native to North America called a turkey?

The answer takes us from Mexico to Spain, Africa, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), France, England, and eventually back across the Atlantic on the Mayflower. Along the way, an American bird gets mistaken for an African one, the English name it after Turkey, the French send it linguistically to India, while the Turks call the Turkey the Hindi, the Indian.

With Canadian Thanksgiving approaching, I follow that strange history back to the Thanksgiving table.

We meet the Wampanoag and Massasoit, look at what probably happened at the Plymouth harvest celebration of 1621, and ask how English settlers and Indigenous people who spoke completely different languages managed to talk to each other.

We also look north. Why does Canada celebrate Thanksgiving in October while Americans wait until November? And why do the two holidays feel a little different?

Then there is the honey.

Honey on Thanksgiving buns. Honey-glazed carrots and sweet potatoes. Honey ham. Honey mustard. But enormous quantities of honey also disappear almost unnoticed into cereal, bread, crackers, granola bars and hundreds of other manufactured foods.

A Thanksgiving meal looks familiar and local. Look more closely, though, and it becomes a map of migration, agriculture, trade, language—and bees.

This podcast was

Recorded October 2026 in Calgary.

Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.

Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: miksha.com

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: [email protected]

Season 10 Episode 1: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Killing the Drones

As autumn arrives, worker honey bees turn against the drones they fed and tolerated all summer. But what triggers their eviction? Is it cold, shorter days, dwindling forage or something else? We explore the strange seasonal ritual known as the killing of the drones, including what happens in tropical colonies and whether an expelled drone understands what is happening to him.

This podcast was

Recorded October 2026 in Calgary.

Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.

Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: miksha.com

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: [email protected]

Season 9 Episode 12: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Building a Better Bee: Brother Adam to DNA

Brother Adam spent his life trying to build a better bee. Thirty years after his death, we can sequence bee genomes, scan more than 100,000 genetic markers and even edit honey-bee DNA. But have we actually made the bee better? This episode follows the journey from Buckfast Abbey to CRISPR — and discovers that genetics may have advanced faster than our definition of "better."

LINKS:

Tribute to Brother Adam: https://www.melissocosmos.gr/2016/02/tribute-to-brother-adam.html

Progress in Bee Genetics: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/11/11/768

Natural Varroa Resistance in Europe: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33302465/

This podcast was

Recorded September 2026 in Calgary.

Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.

Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: miksha.com

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: [email protected]

Season 9 Episode 11: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Getting Rid of Confusion in Beekeeper-Speak

What exactly is a bee colony?

The answer seems obvious. Until beekeepers, scientists and computers all need to agree.

In this episode of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, we explore an international effort to create a common language for bees and beekeeping. Researchers working with Apimondia and the EU Pollinator Hub are developing standardized terminology and the Pollinator Ontology, or PolOn: a structured system that defines concepts and shows how they relate to one another.

Why does this matter? Terms such as colony, hive, swarm, colony strength, winter loss, queenless, Varroa infestation, wild and feral can mean slightly different things to different people, research groups and countries. Those differences become important when scientists try to combine thousands (or millions) of observations.

Along the way, we look at old beekeeping words, multilingual terminology, Eva Crane's pioneering dictionaries, FAIR scientific data, and the growing importance of standardized information in an age of artificial intelligence.

Beekeepers have always exchanged bees, equipment and ideas across borders. Now researchers are trying to make sure the information can travel just as easily.

LINKS:

https://apimondia.org/one-language-for-bees/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0353382&

This podcast was

Recorded September 2026 in Calgary.

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]

Season 9 Episode 10: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bees, Climate Change, Catastrophe

The tables are turned.

Instead of asking the questions on About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, I become the guest on Brady Podloski's Catastrophe podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about honey bees, native bees, climate change, insect decline, agriculture, and ecological collapse.

Are honey bees really helping the environment? Do managed colonies compete with wild native bees? What happens to bumblebees when temperatures rise, seasons shift, and flowers bloom at the wrong time? And why is a perfectly green suburban lawn useless to pollinators?

For this podcast, I draw on more than five decades of beekeeping experience, including years as a commercial beekeeper and later research in bee ecology at the University of Calgary. The discussion moves from canola fields and commercial pollination to wild bees, bumblebee hibernation, fires, floods, drought, habitat loss, pesticides, and phenological mismatch.

Along the way, I give a simple image for understanding ecological decline: slowly take away enough musicians from an orchestra, and eventually the music changes.

A conversation about bees, climate, resilience—and why resilience should never be confused with invulnerability.

LINK: Catastrophe - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/catastrophe/id1772195133

This podcast was

Recorded September 2026 in Calgary.

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]

Season 9 Episode 9: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Helicopters, Varroa, Tech Transfer, and a Life with Bees

In today's episode, we interview Matthew Polinsky, Manitoba's Bee Technology Transfer lead. Matthew grew up around commercial beekeeping in Saskatchewan. His father kept bees, his brother keeps bees, and his grandfather Derek Alen was part of an earlier generation of Prairie beekeepers. But Matthew's own route through beekeeping has been anything but ordinary.

In this episode of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, we follow Matthew from the honey house in Saskatchewan to commercial bee operations in New Zealand and Western Australia—including the remarkable experience of moving honey bee colonies by helicopter.

Matthew later worked with the Saskatraz bee-breeding project, studied at Concordia University in Montréal, participated in bee research, and eventually became Program Lead for Manitoba's Knowledge and Research Transfer Program for Apiculture.

We talk about what "technology transfer" really means, new approaches to Varroa control, RNAi-based mite treatments, queen breeding, old feeding syrup (should you use it, fix it, or dump it?), Tropilaelaps, honey fraud, and why practical beekeeping knowledge and scientific research need each other.

We even travel to the Solomon Islands, where Matthew worked on a beekeeping development project.

It is a conversation about bees, science, family history—and the curious paths that turn a childhood summer job into a career.

Manitoba Knowledge and Research Transfer Program links:

KRTP Syrup Testing Service Explained: https://youtu.be/Vb_m8sEYIhI?si=in6eUKh6gzKH-_R0 KRTP YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@krtpmanitoba KRTP's RNAi Varroa Control Trial Results: https://youtu.be/VmoocGAvy3I?si=8bgAf0OpSIvq-4dj&t=2290 https://www.facebook.com/krtpmb Instagram: @krtpmb https://manitobabee.org/krtp/

This podcast was

Recorded August 2026 in Calgary.

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]

Season 9 Episode 8: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The Autumn Flower: Goldenrod: not really too stinky.

Goldenrod is a keystone species for plant, animal, and ecological survival in a huge part of North America. It is also suffering from an unexpected problem, which is hurting bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. That's this episode's bonus - the collapse of human civilization.

Recorded in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in October 2025; Encore in September 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: [email protected]

Season 9 Episode 7: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The American Honey Queen: Bees, Education and Advocacy

Delanie Craighead, the 2026 American Honey Queen, joins Ron Miksha on About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity for a conversation about honey bees, entomology, education, honey and American beekeeping.

Delanie's route to the American Honey Queen crown is an unusual one. She studied animal biology, parasitology and forensic entomology, served with the Peace Corps in Guyana, participated in the California Master Beekeeping Program, and is now pursuing graduate studies in public health and epidemiology.

As American Honey Queen, Delanie travels across the United States representing the American Beekeeping Federation and talking with everyone from elementary-school students to governors and mayors. She explains why honey bees matter to agriculture, introduces people to regional American honeys, and helps connect the public with the people who keep bees.

Delanie and Ron discuss what forensic entomologists can learn from insects, her childhood raising alpacas and sheep through 4-H and FFA, life in Guyana, becoming a beekeeper, and what she has learned from beekeepers across America.

They also explore the remarkable diversity of honey (from California sage and avocado honey to Florida orange blossom) and the environmental challenges facing bees and beekeepers.

Curiosity, insects, bees, public service and the demanding job behind the crown of the American Honey Queen.

LINKS:

https://abfnet.org/american-honey-queen-program/

This podcast was

Recorded August 2026 in Calgary.

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]

Season 9 Episode 6: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The End of the Honey Flow means Trouble

The honey flow is over. The supers have been extracted. We had a nice crop (300 pounds from 2 hives). More than we can eat at one time. Now the trouble begins.

Robbing. Varroa. Wasps. Crowding. End of the season blahs.

This podcast was

Recorded August 2026 in Calgary.

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]

Season 9 Episode 5: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The 50% Honey Tariff: When a Market Disappears

The bees made the honey. Now who will buy it?

A new 50% U.S. tariff on Canadian honey arrived just as Prairie beekeepers began harvesting the 2026 crop.

The numbers reveal an uncomfortable imbalance: Canadian honey is only about 2% of U.S. honey imports, but the amount we send south is equivalent to roughly 14% of Canada's entire annual honey production. Canadian honey is not that important to American consumers, but American consumers are important to Canadian beekeepers.

For some family beekeeping operations, the exposure is much greater. One Manitoba producer has historically sold about 90% of its honey into the United States. I also loook at Saskatchewan and Alberta beekeepers.

In this episode of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, I look at the people behind the statistics, why the U.S.A. imports so much honey, and whether Canada could absorb more of its own crop by reducing the nearly 25 million pounds of honey Canadians import each year.

The bees did their job. The difficult part now is finding a market.

This podcast was

Recorded August 2026 in Calgary.

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]