Season 4 Episode 5: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Alberta Native Bees in Trouble

We chat about the troubles facing native bees with Alberta Native Bee Council (ANBC) Executive Director Megan Evans. Pollinators of all sorts are essential to the health and success of our environment. Understanding the habitats and lifecycles of the 371 known species of bees in Alberta is the first step towards ensuring the prosperity of these pollinators. This is part of ANBC's work.

Learning about the issues that hinder bee success is necessary before remedies can be found. Megan discusses climate change (bees can’t survive if flowers finish blooming before the bees have raised their brood); habitat loss (due to human encroachment and invasive plant species expanding into native vegetation); invasive species spreading diseases; and the impact of pesticides. To help native bees, there also needs to be enhanced awareness of the difference between wild native bees and managed bees.

Among many projects, ANBC is developing a Living Lawns App to help homeowners create or restore native bee habitats – starting with a goal of one square meter (or one square yard) of landscape for the bees. A million homes following this model would add a million square meters (or yards) of living space and floral resources for native bees.

We also look at calls to action that everyone can implement: learn the difference between native and managed bees; work on ecological literacy; create habitats for native bees; and get excited (bee watching is an actual event)!

Finally, it was reassuring to learn that Megan, who dedicates her work to helping native bees, wasn’t always comfortable around bees. She overcame her reluctance (fear) of bee encounters by becoming curious about pollinators. Listen to this episode to see how that happened!

Visit Alberta Native Bees Council to learn more. https://www.albertanativebeecouncil.ca/

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: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 4: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Thousands and Thousands and Thousands of Queens

Dedicated to the memory of Florida queen breeder David Miksa

This episode was recorded two days before David Miksa passed away. His son Ted and I chat about this remarkable beekeeping family and about queen breeding in general. We jump right into our conversation, catching up with Ted at the end of a long day of his work on the farm.

Among the topics covered are running mating nucs through the hot Florida summer; banking queens in Florida (and how that might work in Canada); queen importation into Canada; the way that inbreeding stock can yield unfortunate surprise results. We note that about 10% of all the managed honey bee colonies in America have queens (or queen cells) that originated at Miksa honey farm in Lake County, Florida - so we talk about the logistics of producing and selling all those queens, the nine stock lines involved and strategies to keep Africanized stock out of those queens.

We wrap up noting the importance of nutrition, especially for nurse bees that are feeding developing queen larvae. And the sage advice: “Take care of the bees and they’ll take care of you.”

This episode was recorded in May, 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: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 3: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bee Thievery

Pay close attention and you may pick up a few clues to reduce honey bee hive thefts. Listen even more closely and you may pick up tips on how to steal colonies. But please don't. It's not worth time in the big house.

We also chat about the apiary in a box (BeeCube), Apimondia's upcoming conference in Denmark, Ron's queen-rearing presentation for Western Apicultural Society, a scheme to raise queens from one single colony (Ron is a skeptic), and ideas around swapping Canadian bees for southern hemisphere bees once a year. But mostly we talk about a honey bee heist that happened here in Alberta, Canada.

This episode was recorded in May, 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: ron@aboutbees.net