About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

Season 8 Episode 12: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – The 3-in-1 Bee Tree: Linden, Lime, and Basswood

Discover why linden, lime, and basswood trees have been used and abused for centuries by beekeepers, herbalists, and woodworkers in this About Bees episode.

The basswood (aka linden and lime) is one of the world's finest honey trees. Join me, Ron Miksha, as we explore the tree's weird little flowers, fragrant honey, soothing sleepy-time herbal tea, fascinating history, and the surprising myth of the basswood. Along the way we bump into legendary beekeeper C.C. Miller, visit Scotland and Berlin, talk to the basswood growing in my front lawn in Calgary, uncover the truth behind dead bees under basswood trees, and discover why planting a basswood is what you can do for people you will never meet.

Recorded July 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 8 Episode 11: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Joe's Greenhouse and Bees Philosophy

Today we visit Ron's brother Joe McShaw at Honeymoon Acres in New Holstein, Wisconsin. We'll explore his management philosophy, running a business with family, selling 3,000,000 plants, and working with 14 colonies of honey bees that live beside his 15-acre pumpkin garden.

Honeymoon Acres Greenhouses

Dark Horse Hive Mind Episode

Recorded June 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 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: [email protected]

Season 8 Episode 9: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Scotland through a Beekeeper's Eyes

Join me on a journey through Scotland as I explore Edinburgh, Inverness, the Highlands, Loch Ness, and the famous Scottish heather moors. What began as a visit with my daughter, who studies at the University of Edinburgh, quickly became an opportunity to see Scotland through the eyes of a beekeeper.

Along the way, I discover why Scotland's landscapes are so different from those of western Canada, learn about the country's history and culture, sample authentic heather honey, travel by train through the Highlands, and reflect on the people, language, food, and scenery that make Scotland unique.

We'll talk about heather, honey bees, canola, bramble, Gaelic place names, Dolly the cloned sheep, haggis, and even a surprising Scottish heat wave.

Whether you're interested in bees, travel, history, or simply curious about Scotland, I think you'll enjoy coming along for the ride.

Recorded in Scotland, May 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 8 Episode 8: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Black Locust: Appalachia's Gift to World Beekeeping

One of Europe's most famous honey trees actually came from the Appalachian Mountains of North America.

In this episode of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, we follow the remarkable story of Robinia pseudoacacia, black locust, also known across Europe as "acacia." Originally a minor honey plant of disturbed Appalachian forests, this fast-growing legume escaped its native range and became one of the most widely planted trees on Earth.

We explore how black locust spread through France, Hungary, Korea, Japan, and beyond; why beekeepers prize its short but spectacular nectar flow; and how its pale, mild, slow-crystallizing honey became one of Europe's best-known honey types.

Along the way, we look at:

the confusion between true acacias and false acacia why black locust often performs better outside North America its use for fence posts, mine reclamation, and erosion control the tree's role in carbon capture, and the controversy over how this bee tree is also an invasive ecological threat

Recorded in Calgary, May 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 8 Episode 7: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – World Bee Day, No Mow May, and Do Bees Dream?

It's No Mow May, World Bee Day is coming up, so, of course, I was wondering if bees dream.

Recorded in Calgary, May 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 8 Episode 6: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Tupelo Honey: Swamps, Bees, and Southern Taste

In this episode of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, we travel into the flooded river forests of Florida and Georgia to explore the remarkable story of tupelo honey - one of the rarest and most celebrated honeys in North America.

Produced mainly from the blossoms of the Ogeechee tupelo tree, Nyssa ogeche, tupelo honey has fascinated beekeepers, scientists, musicians, and food lovers for generations. We examine the ecology of the tupelo swamps along the Apalachicola River, the brief spring nectar flow, and the unusual chemistry that gives tupelo honey its legendary sweetness and resistance to crystallization.

The episode explores the early history of tupelo beekeeping, including the era when bees and honey were moved through flooded forests by boats and barges. We also examine modern pressures on the tupelo industry, including environmental change, river management, overcrowding of bee yards, and authenticity concerns in premium honey markets.

Along the way, we connect the science and folklore of tupelo honey to Van Morrison's classic song "Tupelo Honey" and the film Ulee's Gold, starring Peter Fonda.

From native pollinators that visited tupelo trees long before honey bees arrived in North America, to the modern commercial honey harvest, this is the story of a landscape, a tree, and one of the most distinctive honeys ever produced.

Recorded in Calgary, May 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 8 Episode 5: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Wild Bee Care in the Spring

This podcast episode featured Ilan Domnich, the native bee stewardship specialist with the Alberta Native Bee Council, discussing how to support native bees in spring. Ilan explained that Alberta has 370 species of native bees, with 70% overwintering underground and 30% in plant stems or elsewhere, emphasizing the importance of leaving leaf litter ("Leave the leaves.") until temperatures consistently reach 10 degrees Celsius (50F) and preserving hollow plant stems. We chatted about dandelions and their dubious benefit for bees, clarifying that while they provide early season nectar, dandelions lack essential nutrients and can divert bees from higher-quality food sources. Ilan recommended three key actions for homeowners: - delaying spring cleanup, - planting native early-blooming flowers like Saskatoon berries and crocuses, and - creating bare soil patches for ground-nesting bees. The episode concluded with information about the Alberta Native Bee Council's bumblebee box monitoring program, where people can create habitats and contribute to scientific research. Alberta Native Bee Council: https://www.albertanativebeecouncil.ca/

Recorded in Calgary, May 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 8 Episode 4: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Can Magnets Help Honey Bees Survive Winter?

In this episode, we examine the unusual controversial question of whether electromagnetic fields affect honey bees. We begin with the broader idea that the bees' world is surrounded by weak natural and artificial electromagnetic signals.

The discussion includes Schumann resonance (the low-frequency electromagnetic background of the Earth) and considers why some beekeepers insist that bees may are sensitive to such energy, and why I think they are badly misstaken. From there, the episode moves into bee orientation, magnetoreception, and the possibility that honey bees respond to magnetic fields in ways that are still poorly understood.

A central focus is a 2026 publication about a magnetic-disc overwintering experiment, which claimed improved colony survival and resilience when hives were fitted with magnetic devices. The episode looks at that claim and what the study suggests, what it does not prove, and what weaknesses in design or statistics would need to be addressed before strong conclusions could be made. In other words, I think that magnets under hives may be a good idea, but I don't think this paper's results are not based on a good experimental design.

Overall, I try to give my typical skeptical exploration of bees, electromagnetic environments, winter survival, and the difficulty of separating promising biological effects from experimental noise.

Recorded in Calgary, May 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 8 Episode 3: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – More than Packages

Bees can arrive in packages. Putting them into snow-covered hive boxes is exciting. We'll install packages and chat bees and more on this episode.

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]