About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

Season 5 Episode 9: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Beekeeping along Canada's Sunshine Coast

Canada has a sunshine coast. That's where I met up with my friend Steve Clifford. Steve is a honey producer (mostly Himalayan blackberry honey) and he produces and sells queens and nucs. It's a really different part of Canada - a rainforest where it seldom snows, but summers can get hot and sunny.

This episode was recorded in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia, in September 2025.

See Steve Clifford interviewed by Coast Magazine

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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 5 Episode 8: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Chile for Avocado Pollination, Queen Production, and Adventure

Today's guest is Francisco Rey, a Chilean beekeeper and avocado farmer. We talk about the country of Chile, Francisco's 43 years of beekeeping, queen breeding, Francisco's friendship with researcher John Kefuss, Francisco's family-run bee farm, avocado pollination, avocado honey, exporting queens, and we talk about why you should visit Francisco in South America..

This episode was recorded in August 2025.

Francisco Rey's Chilean Bee Farm: www.pacificqueens.com

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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 5 Episode 7: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Buckwheat: Our Favourite August Honey Plant

Buckwheat is quirky. Both the plant and the honey. We look at both - plant and honey - in today's podcast. Especially the black, chokingly-strong honey.

Buckwheat, though often mistaken for a cereal grain, is actually a member of the Polygonaceae family, kin to rhubarb and sorrel. First cultivated in China more than 6,000 years ago, it spread westward along trade routes and became a staple in Eastern Europe for its short growing season, tolerance of poor soils, and high-protein, gluten-free grain. Farmers turned it into groats, roasted kasha, soba noodles, dumplings, pancakes, and beer.

In North America, buckwheat once covered millions of acres, especially in Pennsylvania, New York, and later Manitoba. Today, only about 50,000 acres remain in the U.S., with North Dakota as the largest producer. Farmers planted it as a rescue crop when other fields failed, and its continuous bloom provided nectar during mid-summer gaps.

For bees and beekeepers, buckwheat is both boon and bane. Yields could soar to 200 pounds per hive in good years, but hot, dry weather can shut nectar off completely. The honey is almost black, rich in minerals and antioxidants, with a flavor that people either cherish or despise. Folks often describe it as barnyard-like, molasses-like, or medicinal.

Culturally, buckwheat honey was prized by Eastern European immigrants and Jewish communities, especially for Rosh Hashanah. Today, production is rare, but the memory and distinct taste linger. I know. I made a few thousand pounds of buckwheat years ago in Pennsylvania and I spill some memories here today.

This episode was recorded in August 2025.

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 5 Episode 6: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Laura Sends us Deep into the Beekeeping Groove

This wide-ranging beekeeping podcast takes us from Wales to New Zealand and then Alberta, Canada, with beekeeper Laura Barritt. We look at commercial beekeeping in New Zealand and touch on Sir Edmund Hillary, manuka honey, queen breeding, package shaking, honey producing by under supering, migratory beekeeping, favourite honeys, the Bee Cube®, viral 13-year-old harvesting honey in his house, maintaining queen bee lines, aging of beekeepers, fireweed honey production, honey bee adaptaions to new crops, and becoming a commercial beekeeper.

Links from this episode:

Rata honey in New Zealand

Bee Cube®

13-year-old beekeeper Oliver Taylor

This episode was recorded in July 2025.

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 5 Episode 5: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – World's Most Interesting Bee Museum - and more...

I am just back from a quick trip to central Europe, where I visited bees in Slovenia and family in Hungary. You don't want to miss what this curious beekeeper has to say about what he saw!

Among other things,, I explored the world's most interesting beekeeping museum. What would you put into the museum if it were yours?

This episode was recorded in August 2025.

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 5 Episode 4: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bees, Greenhouses, and 18-hour Work Days

It takes 18-hour workdays to keep a greenhouse that produces 3 million plants a year, and to keep a dozen hives of bees on the side to pollinate a10-acre pumpkin patch.

Our guest is Joe McShaw, of Honeymoon Acres in Wisconsin. Joe is Ron's youngest brother, so we have a lot of fun on this episode. We do bees, wintering (or not), raising plants to retail, and we answer that old question, "Why be good?"

Visit Honeymoon Acres: https://honeymoonacres.com/

This episode was recorded in July 2025.

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 5 Episode 3: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Ask Me Anything for July 2025

Ask me anything.

I start off with a powerful phrase you can always use when a pesky new beekeeper wants advice with their bees. Keep this phrase in your toolkit.

Also, just a bit about putting supers on and taking supers off. Summer management questions, answered in this AMA.

This episode was recorded in July 2025.

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 5 Episode 2: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – July's Best Honey Plant

What's July's best honey plant? In much of the northern hemisphere, if the soil is sweet alkali, the answer is sweet clover.

It's a spectacular honey plant, one of the best in the world, but it originated far away from the western plains. It's invasive. Wild. Part of today's episode considers what this means - native, invasive; old, new; wanted, unwanted.

This episode was recorded in July 2025.

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 5 Episode 1: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Beekeeping on Canada Day

It's Canada Day, up Canada way, on the first day of July.

We talk bees, sunshine, swarms that refuse to be retrieved, and of course Stompin' Tom Connors. Enjoy, eh?

This episode was recorded in July 2025.

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 4 Episode 9: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Slovenia, the Country that Buzzes

In preparation for a trip to central Europe, I have been learning about beekeeping in the small country of Slovenia. I always learn a lot about beekeeping by looking at beekeeping in other parts of the world. It's amazing how many good ideas, and a few bad ones, I pick up this way. Anyway, I wrote a bit about beekeeping in the quaint country of Slovenia, and today I am reading my story to you.

One of the first things I discovered during my research, is that the two million people in Slovenia are almost all beekeepers. Or they know a beekeeper. Or they know where to buy good local honey from a beekeeper. With ten thousand beekeepers, that's a lot more than the number of people keeping bees in many much larger and more populous countries.

The country of Slovenia borders on Austria, Hungary, Croatia, and Italy. What a mix! And the scenery goes from ice-capped Alps to Mediterranean seaside. We have a lot of history, culture, and beekeeping to do – so, let's get going!

This episode was recorded in June 2025.

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]