Season 2 Episode 2: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bumble Bees 101 with Mathias Fenton

We welcome biology instructor Mathias Fenton of Mount Royal University. He tells us about big bumbling bumble bees. Our chat touches on the relationship between wasps, ants, honey bees and bumble bees. Mathias mentions some of his interesting wild bee observations and we give a shoutout to iNaturalist, a great public resource that all naturalists, regardless their experience level, can appreciate and enjoy.

In this episode, we focus on the bumble bee lifecycle and best places to position empty nest boxes. In the spring, these cool-weather insects start a nest with just a single queen. She mated the previous fall, then waited under snowdrifts for the new season. Then she begins with a search for a suitable nesting site. Mathias explains how the Alberta Native Bee Council surveyed the nesting success of 400 empty wooden boxes placed in back yards by citizen-scientists. Success varied statistically depending on how far above ground the empty boxes were placed, direction of box entrances, colour of paint, and amount of sunlight hitting the bees' wooden homes. Anyone hoping to attract bumble bee pollinators by setting up backyard boxes will find Mathias Fenton's results interesting and helpful.

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Bumble bee box assembly instructions can be found on this page.

Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 2 Episode 1: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Chief Crowchild and the Bees

Chief Lee Crowchild of Tsuut'ina Nation is a member of a family designated as the Keepers of the Bees. He tells us of childhood summers spent sleeping in a tent that carried the symbol of the bee. But it was not until later in life that he tasted honey from a hive behind his house when he realized how deeply bees were embedded in his life.

In this episode, we learn a bit about the culture of the Tsuut'ina people and the Chief's honey bee apiary that helped build respect for the bees and skills, knowledge, and self-esteem for people at Tsuut'ina. You will also hear about a bee-welcoming smudge ceremony that still fills Ron with wonder.

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Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 2 Trailer: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Season 2

Season 2 of About Bees opens today! We look ahead at the next 12 episodes that has guests talking about 300-pound honey crops, helping bumble bees find a home, controlling granulation, beekeeping at Tsuu'tina Nation with Chief Crowchild, raising queen cells on Canada's westcoast, amazing BeeCube technology, and, of course Plato.

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Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 1 Episode 12: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bees by the Number

In this episode, we manage to jump around the bee world by using the numbers 1, 2, 2-3, 26, 500, 20,000, 45,000, and 50,000. That’s a wealthy range of handsome numbers!

One queen? Not always. What about zero queens plus laying workers? Or more than one queen? Did you know that some beekeepers quit running two-queen colonies because their hives made so much honey that they became impractical to add supers on top? We're talking 600 pounds per hive.

Two words. Please folks, it is honey bee, not honeybee. Two words. Beehive, one word. Bee yard, two words. We explore why it’s important to use words correctly, including ‘robbing’ the bees and all the baggage that the word ‘robbing’ carries. Then we naturally start talking about witches.

Why 2-3 and the numbers 26 and 500? And why those big numbers – 20,000, 45,000 and 50,000? You’ll have to listen to find out what those are about. Curious? Let's go!

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Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 1 Episode 11: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Moving Bees 2

We begin this podcast with the capture of a swarm, with details described in real time. The subject of Hutterites, a Christian religious group, came up when similarities between Hutterite colonies and bee colonies 'splitting' was discussed.

Since we are again talking about moving hives of bees this episode, Ron has a neat trick to help you pick up a single-storey colony (such as a swarm) and move it inside the trunk of a car or back of a van. Simple, fast, cheap, and the bees don’t get out and get lost.

Later in the episode, Ron describes a couple of harrowing bee-moving incidents that involved truck malfunctions – brake failure on a steep mountain road and then an accelerator jamming on a busy toll road. Luckily, no one was hurt.

We talk about the Tesla truck, which probably wouldn’t be much good for hauling bees, then Elon Musk, Twitter, and the future of the planet.

We wrap up with an inside look at a large-scale commercial honey farm, Scandia Honey, and talk shop about the operation of 15,000 colonies of bees on the western Canadian prairies. So, let's go!

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Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 1 Episode 10: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Moving Bees, part 1

Part 1 of Moving Honey Bees. We look at the ways beekeepers have carted their hives on the backs of humans, donkeys, horse-drawn wagons, boats, flat-bed trucks, semi-rigs, and aircraft.

We don’t neglect to acknowledge the inventors of the palletized migratory beekeeping system, the native bees who became displaced refugees, California almond growers, and a very special shoutout the President Eisenhower who promoted the amazing highway systems just so American beekeepers don’t get caught at a red light in Mayberry, North Carolina.

It's a wide highway, so let's roll!

Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 1 Episode 9: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Honey Harvest Time

After a few minutes pondering how some carpenter ants in Florida choose the profession of surgeon (sawing off sick comrades wounded legs), Bidzina and Ron settle into a honey harvest discussion.

This episode is packed with ideas and suggestions that describe four legal ways to harvest honey and one illegal way. Then it wraps up with talk about amazingly big crops and the three disastrous ones that helped persuade Ron to move on to a new life. It's a wild ride, so let's go!

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/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 1 Episode 8: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast - Dogs That Smell

We talk with Rose-Anne Bouffard, a bee enthusiast who trains dogs to find and rescue wayward bumblebee nests and to locate colonies with American Foulbrood (AFB).

Dog breeds and their amazing scent sensitivity are discussed. Bloodhounds are best for sniffing out bumblebee nests and honeybee diseases, but that's not what Rose uses. Humans have million scent receptors and can smell AFB, but dogs have thirty million receptors. Dogs also use their floppy ears to stir up scents. The bee-rescuing dogs were trained through find-reward-repeat sessions. We discuss training a tracking dog to find AFB and the huge economic value that brings.

Talking about stings, Rose finds that controlling her breath and going into a meditative state when working around bees is essential. Without the proper mindset, apparently Preparation H helps with the bee stings you will get.

The questions of bee consciousness and a bees' ability to sense pain come up. We agree that bees probably feel pain.

Finally, there is a big shout out to Alberta Native Bee Council, the Suzuki Butterflyway Project, iNaturalist, and the urgency for action. Rose's bee and dog projects are looking for collaborators so check out her website to learn how to get involved!

Rose's website address for Dogs Find Bees is https://dogsfindbees.com/ Let's go!

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/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net