Bees on the Rocks

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Ron Miksha

Combs clinging to rock ledges and human foragers climbing to harvest part of the sticky sweet honey gathered by wild bees on the edge of the Himalayas conjures up images of a way of life few of us will ever witness.
However, a couple of weeks ago, I had a note from someone who rekindled my envy.

The note was from Deepa Pudasaini, who works for a community-run honey company, Himalayan Cliff Honey, in Nepal. They have been working with the indigenous people of the Himalayas who harvest a sustainable amount of wild cliff honey produced by the giant bees in Nepal. We are also directly working with the local beekeepers of the Himalayan region helping them market their honey and other bee products. Deepa’s role is editor and contributor for Himalayan Cliff Honey and you can read more about her at https://deepapudasaini.com.np/

Here is Deepa Pudasaini‘s story of the cliff bees…

Wild Bees of the Himalayas

In the high altitude of the Himalaya Kush Region- mountain range in Asia, there lives a giant bee species. The world knows it by the name of the Himalayan giant honey bee and the scientific community recognizes it under the name Apis laboriosa.

As a bee behavior common in any honey bee species, it makes honey recognized by the world as “mad honey”. But before the immense popularity prevailed, natives in Nepal were already using it- for centuries with the name cliff honey (“Bhir maha” in Nepali).

This blog covers every aspect of these Himalayan pollinators, from this bee’s detailed description, its popular honey to how only natives of the mountain villages in Nepal harvest it.

Double The Size of Regular Bees

Beginning with how the bee appears to be, it’s almost double the size of the regular honey bee species. For your best imagination, you can compare its body size with that of a hornet.

The bulky body mass is of benefit to them. At least when they have to sit intact in their nests amidst the turbulent mountain breezes and also when they need muscle power to generate enough energy for long-term flights while foraging in the huge mountain forests.

The structural difference can be observed as nature’s way to help them function optimally in the harsh living conditions of the higher altitudes.

Pollinators of The Himalayas

The Himalayas have one of the most extreme environments on Earth. The colder climate and windier environment are the main hurdles to the existence of any pollinators. The air at high altitudes above a certain level has a sparse oxygen level where normal bee species can not survive.

Among the limited population of unique pollinators seen in the region, Apis laborisa has been reported to survive beyond 4,000 metres. This species has played the role of key pollinator and spends its life helping alpine and subalpine plants thrive. The local crops in the Himalayas are also a gift of these honey bees. 

They are the best fits as the main pollinators of the mountain ecosystem. And for this they went through major adaptations over time. Some of the surprising features we hardly get to see in regular bee species include:

  1. Apis laboriosa has huge hives that can accommodate more than 100,000 bees. This huge population forms a tight cluster year-round and the warmth thus created is what sustains them throughout the year in extreme conditions.
  1. The hives are built facing south-east directions with the motive to get warmth from the sun throughout the day (amazing how nature has shaped these bees!).
  1. Worker bees make a huge proportion of the colony. This allows for the storage of a huge amount of food. So there will be less chance of scarcity.
  1. The colony’s defensive behavior is too aggressive especially to protect the hive from the birds and other predators.
  1. The migratory behavior is also sophisticated. Once the cold hits the mountains and the temperature starts to become intolerable, the colonies move down the cliffs to overwinter.

Limited Honey Batches

Unlike commercial honey production, these wild bees have their own cycle of nectar deposition and use. Spring and autumn are two different seasons when flowers bloom in the mountain regions where they inhabit. These are the only times when they can collect enough nectar to survive for the rest of the year.

One single honey hive has 90 to 100kgs of mad honey in it and the excess was consumed only by natives residing on the foothills of the Himalayas for centuries. But now, the scenario is different. The “cliff honey” once limited to the mountain villages is now established as an exotic honey in the international market as “mad honey”.

There is an interesting turn to how cliff honey got the name “mad honey”. Rhododendron flowers, the main alpine floral nectar source for these bees have a psychedelic compound known as “grayanotoxin”. This compound is deposited in the produced honey and once it gets metabolized in our body, we feel mild euphoria, and what we experience is dose-dependent. When compared, the spring batch is more potent than the autumn ones as it is mainly made of rhododendron nectar.

Centuries-old Honey Hunting Tradition

It can be quite unnatural if you think wild honey can be harvested like regular honey, especially when it comes to cliff honey. The bees’ hives are hundreds of meters above the ground and reaching them is already a challenging task.

The Himalayan natives recognised cliff honey as a potential food source and deliberately developed ways to reach the honey hives that seemed too far away, Over time, an established cliff-hanging technique was developed that’s still in use. Every step was continuously refined considering safety, convenience to climb the steep cliffs and no harm to the bees.

Today, the community comes together for the preparation. They make their own climbing ropes using bamboo fibers, collecting baskets with bamboo strips and cutting tools from bamboo poles. The hunter climbs the cliff and cuts down mature hives taking hours. For anyone viewing the whole process, every move the main harvester makes is nothing short of a thrilling adventure.

The honey’s use was previously limited to the harvesting communities. They added it to their traditional fermented drink, herbal potions which they used as a remedy for various ailments and stored excess for the rest of the year. Today, they sell it at a price enough to feed the whole community making it an important commodity along with the mad honey expedition attracting tens to hundreds of tourists each year.

Conclusion

Himalayan giant honey bees are survivors of high altitudes. And nature has shaped their behavior perfectly for sustenance. The alpine and subalpine floras limited in the mountains are thriving because of the existence of a few pollinators including this bee species.

Although this significant pollinator has a huge role in the world ecosystem balance, they are more known for its “mad honey”. The Himalayan residents are the original harvesters of mad honey which later became an important source of economic support and food security.  In return, they have contributed to maintaining the sustainability of the bees by carefully avoiding any actions that could damage cliffs or hives. In conclusion, they share a long-standing relationship of coexistence.

For more photos and details about the giant cliff bees, be sure to visit the Cliff Honey website!

I hope you enjoyed this blog. Remember that I have a podcast, About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity. It’s available everywhere you get your podcasts, and at this link.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/about-bees-culture-curiosity/id1760959092

Posted in Beekeeping, Ecology, Honey, Honey Plants, Native Bees, Save the Bees, Travels | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Dandelion: The Bee Plant That Doesn’t Need Bees

Posted on April 18, 2026 by Ron Miksha

Some things I didn’t know about dandelions until today: Dandelions don’t need bees. Or any other pollinators – not even wind or gravity to move their pollen. Each dandelion flower is made up of a hundred florets, each an individual mini-flower that gives up the plant’s own tissue to create a seed. Each seed is unpollinated, a clone, identical in genetics to the original dandelion that arrived in North America centuries ago. Looking at a field of dandelions is the same as looking at a field of clones and it’s the same as looking at the same flower that our ancestors saw.

Dandelions don’t need bees at all. Most common dandelions reproduce through apomixis. They produce seeds without pollination. No pollen transfer. No fertilization. Each plant creates clones of itself. So while bees visit dandelions for nectar and pollen, they aren’t helping the plant reproduce.

Photo by Олександр К on Unsplash

That runs against the usual story we tell about flowers and pollinators. In this case, the relationship is one-sided. The bees take what they need, and the plant carries on without them.

Dandelions show up early. In many places, they’re the first thing people notice in spring. Bright yellow, everywhere at once, and full of bees. It’s easy to assume they are the first and best food source for honey bees. They aren’t.

Before dandelions bloom, bees are already working. Alders, maples, willows, elms, and even skunk cabbage come first. These plants provide much of the early pollen that gets colonies moving again after winter. Dandelions arrive a bit later, and by then, the colony is already expanding.

Even then, dandelion pollen is not ideal food. It is abundant and easy for bees to collect, but it lacks a complete balance of essential amino acids. Bees can use it, but they do better when it’s mixed with pollen from other plants.

As a honey plant, dandelion is inconsistent. In some years and places, bees may store a modest surplus. The honey is strong, deep yellow, and granulates quickly. Most of the time, it’s not worth extracting.

But dandelion arrives at the right time. It provides nectar and pollen when colonies are building. It helps bridge the gap between early trees and later flows.

Dandelions are not invasive in the ecological sense. They are naturalized. They prefer disturbed ground like lawns, roadsides, compacted soils. They follow human activity rather than reshape ecosystems. You don’t see them taking over intact prairies or forests. You see them where people have already changed the land. That’s a twist, isn’t it? Dandelion is a species that does better because of people, not worse.

Dandelions are also useful to people. The leaves can be eaten, especially when young. The flowers can be made into wine or syrup, or sewn together to make temporary sweaters. The roots can be roasted and brewed as fake coffee. For centuries, they were carried around the world as a medicinal plant, which explains how they spread so widely.

If you’d like to hear more about this amazing yellow and green weed, listen to this episode of the About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast.

I hope you enjoy this blog and the podcast episode – available everywhere you get your podcasts, and at this link.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dandelion-the-bee-plant-that-doesnt-need-bees/id1760959092?i=1000762147786

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March is Orange Blossom Month

Posted on March 24, 2026 by Ron Miksha

I just released a podcast episode about citrus trees. I’ve been trying to find honey plants in bloom during each month. I’ve been surprisingly consistent since I started this series in July with sweet clover. This is March, there is usually an orange tree or two blooming somewhere in Florida, Texas, Arizona, or California this month, so I created an episode about orange trees.

I’ll start with something that sounds trivial but isn’t. Oranges don’t grow in orchards. They grow in groves. It’s a small linguistic difference, but indicates history, geography, and culture all tangled together.

Say “orchard” in central Florida and you’ll immediately identify yourself as someone who has never driven down a sandy trail between rows of citrus trees with sticky side mirrors and bees bouncing off your windshield.

I know a bit about Florida citrus because I kept bees in the groves there for about 10 years back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Back then, there were nearly a million acres of citrus.

You could pull off the road almost anywhere and grab an illegal orange or grapefruit for a quick snack. Try that today and you’ll likely be standing in someone’s driveway. The groves are disappearing.

At its peak, Florida produced about 12 million pounds of orange blossom honey each year. Today it’s down to a quarter of that. The acreage has collapsed. Disease, development, and changing economics have taken their toll.

In this episode of the About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast, I look at the death of Florida’s citrus groves. Along the way, we visit the trees, their flowers, orange blossom honey, and beekeeping in the Sunshine State.

This was skinny me, at the edge of a grove, shaking fresh orange nectar from a frame.
Strong hives at Kuharske location. I used modified depths. Beautiful citrus trees there.
Small orange tree in bloom. That little hive is a nuc/split.
Honey bee on orange blossom. Note that this bee doesn’t seem to be carrying pollen.
A grove is bloom!
Click a picture to enlarge!

I hope you enjoy this blog and the podcast episode – available everywhere you get your podcasts, and at this link.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/march-is-orange-blossom-month/id1760959092?i=1000756871427

Posted in Bee Yards, Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, Culture, or lack thereof, Honey Plants, Podcasts | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Serving the Perfect Cup of Tea

Posted on March 16, 2026 by Ron Miksha
The classy, practical Umi Tea Set

The perfect cup of tea starts with honey. At least, that’s how the royals do it. It’s hard to argue that anyone else would know better. They’ve got history, experience, connections and money. And tea is important in their part of the stratosphere. So how do you do tea, if you want to do it royally?

Begin by putting honey in the cup. Not sugar. Brew the tea –  100C for English breakfast tea, or 70C for green tea, measured with a thermometer. (Butler style, I dunk in a clean finger – you get to know the temperature with experience.) Black tea should be brewed for five minutes, and not consumed at all, while green tea should only get three minutes, then enjoyed vigorously.

If you must use milk, as the Queen herself did, it goes in last. Now, you might sit back and watch the clouds in your tea, but proper etiquette demands that you stir the concoction – never in circles! – but slowly back and forth, like the paddle of a canoe that will never cross a lake. Oh, and never let the spoon clang against the side of the bone china while paddling or you’ll be having tea with the servants before you know what’s happened. (If they let you join them.)

Remember, the honey goes into the cup before the tea. That’s easy to remember – add the best first. What sort of honey should you use? The mildest you can find. It should be white, never amber, and very neutral in flavour. Buckwheat or manuka will turn your tea into medicine. I know. I have been eating a spoonful of manuka every day and I tried some in today’s green tea. I won’t make that mistake again.

How much should you use? Well, that depends on the type of honey. If you use a high fructose honey, such as tupelo, one or two small drops is probably plenty. On the other hand, honey that’s high in glucose (such as canola), is not as sweet and may take a spoonful. You really should work this out for yourself – I don’t know how well your taste buds control your life. What I do know, however, is that a good cup of green tea with honey in mid-winter will make life worth living.

To really enjoy that tea, you need to consider the cup, too. We are excited about the Umi Tea Set, which we discovered a couple of weeks ago. It is double-walled glass, which gets rid of the cup handle, so it becomes simple and clean – without burning your hand when you hold it.

Our set came with an acacia serving tray and hand-blown cups and kettle. The double-layered insulated cups are especially nice because we can watch the honey dissolve in the cup. It’s a winner, a keeper, and about $100 US – here’s a link. It arrived safe and very durably wrapped, direct from the tea set factory. Go get it and enjoy!

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When Bees Finally Get a Bathroom Break

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Ron Miksha

March is a confusing month here in Calgary. Three weeks of it belongs to winter. Snow sits around in gray crusty patches that melt, refreeze, and melt again. Nights are cold enough to freeze the ground solid.

But when I stand beside a beehive at noon, you can feel that the sun is stronger. That tiny bit of warmth is enough to trigger one of the most important events in the honey bee calendar.

The bathroom break.

Honey bees spend the winter clustered inside their hive, eating honey and keeping the colony warm. But unlike humans, cattle, dogs, or politicians, they absolutely refuse to relieve themselves in their own home.

Bees treat the inside of their hive like a sterile nursery. It contains brood, honey, pollen, and the queen. Defecating inside would invite mold, disease and parasites into the colony.

These streaks are from the bees defecating. It’s not a good sign – they should have been strong enough to fly far away from the hive.

So they hold it.

For weeks. Sometimes months.

A winter bee can store waste in her hindgut until it reaches nearly a third of her body weight. Imagine carrying around a heavy backpack full of all of the winter’s lunches.

Eventually, the colony waits for a suitable day: sunshine, calm winds, and temperatures warm enough for flight muscles to operate.

The sky fills with bees. And then—well—relief happens. Tiny yellow, brown, and black droplets scatter across the snow.

To a beekeeper, those dots can be comforting. They mean the colony survived winter. Of course, bee droppings occasionally become someone else’s problem.

Years ago, I kept a bee yard behind a very expensive house in Florida. One day the neighbor, a lawyer, stopped me and asked if I knew where I could buy a million tiny diapers.
He pointed at his car.
Yellow spots everywhere. I moved the bees that night.

But stories about bee droppings gets even stranger.

During the Cold War, mysterious yellow droplets reportedly fell from the sky in Southeast Asia. People believed aircraft were spraying chemical weapons. The phenomenon became known as “Yellow Rain.”

Old-fashioned Yellow Rain.

Analysis of the samples revealed something strange. Partially digested pollen grains. Scientists eventually concluded the “rain” may have come from mass defecation flights of giant Asian honey bees. When thousands of bees take flight and lighten their digestive load at the same time, the results can look surprisingly like a yellow shower. Sounds weird that they would mimic a traditional Roman public bath, but you can never tell about bees.

If you are curious about this complete story, and the bees’ digestion system, and how bees can fly on cool winter days, jump over to my podcast for the rest of the story.

You can enjoy this podcast episode wherever you listen to podcasts.

Check out the About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast.

Posted in Beekeeping, Podcasts, Tools and Gadgets | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

An Apiary in a Box

Posted on February 25, 2026 by Ron Miksha

The image above is from the BeeCube website. Inside that box is an entire apiary. It can be loaded on the back of a truck and hauled off to a new location – wintering spot, spring build-up, pollination, summer honey production. Open the door, and you are immersed in the bees’ world. The colonies each have a separate exit to the flowers beyond their hives, which are clustered inside. The beekeeper enters the BeeCube to do inspections, super the colonies, feed or simply encourage them. Colonies are fully accessible inside, fully free to fly outside. This is a new innovation here in Calgary. I have never seen anything quite like it here.

This photo, taken in northern Croatia by my family in 1983 shows the same basic principles of the BeeCube – a doorway (behind the wagon), a hallway for the beekeeper to open the backs of hives, bee exits facing out, and a way to move the entire apiary to new pasture.

The BeeCube is much more advanced, with insulation and sensors, but the basic idea has proven itself over generations.

I saw another version of the BeeCube a couple of years ago, in Israel. It’s manufactured by a company called BeeWise. I visited their corporate headquarters where 70 employees worked in the development of an apiary-in-a-box that included cameras, sensors, robotic frame manipulation, and even an extractor inside each unit.

BeeWise development shop at the BeeWise Campus in Israel. Here are three units (out of many) being tested before deployment. Primary clients are in the pollinator business. (photo: Miksha)

I recently chatted with Herman van Reekum, founder and chief innovator of BeeCube in Calgary, Alberta. We talked a bit about the development of the BeeCube as well as other projects he is designing at Beekeeping Innovations. You can enjoy this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

We discuss the advantages of the BeeCube and other new developments that Herman creating – a beekeeper’s app (Be the Bee) for recording and analyzing bee colony health and management; and, Global Bee Digest, a Substack newsletter that aggrandizes current news and research in bees and beekeeping. Listen to the podcast to learn the whole story.

Beekeeping Innovations: https://www.beekeepinginnovations.ca/

BeeCube: https://www.beecube.io/

The Global Beekeeping Digest: https://globalmobility.substack.com/

The BeeCube in action.

Check out the About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast.

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Wintering at 50 Below in the Yukon

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Ron Miksha
Yukon Apiary of Etienne Tardif: YouTube Channel

The Yukon is not usually considered ‘beekeeping country’, but there is some great beekeeping science going on up there right now. Etienne Tardif, an engineer with a fondness for spreadsheets and experimentation, has been keeping bees for 15 years in this cold territory in Canada’s north.

On a recent episode of the About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast, we chat with Etienne about keeping bees and wintering in a place where the thermometer dips to minus 50 (C or F – they are about the same at that depth of cold), and bees have only about 12 weeks to do all of their business. To top it off, there’s no agriculture nearby (so, no canola or alfalfa). The bees pick from sparse berry bushes and goldenrod when those plants are in bloom. Crops are not enormous in that part of Canada.

Nevertheless, Etienne has been able to successfully winter – in single-storey hives! – and produce honey. Wintering depends on appropriate equipment, knowledge of nest volume, and understanding the positive role that carbon dioxide can play in helping bees get through the winter.

Don’t miss this podcast. Etienne and Ron discuss successful wintering tips that can be applied anywhere that bees have to take a cold-weather break.

Check out the About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast.

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Sylvia Plath, the Beekeeper’s Poet

Posted on February 11, 2026 by Ron Miksha

Today, February 11, is the anniversary of the death of a great poet, Sylvia Plath. The daughter of a bee scientist, Sylvia spent her brief life writing about love, loss, disappointment, and nature. Don’t skip this short (20 minute) podcast episode. You will be surprised.

Smoke. A beekeeper’s smoke. This, from a PBS dramatic documentary about Sylvia Plath, is how she seemed to remember her father. Enjoy my podcast episode about the famous poet.

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Dead Bees in the Snow!

Posted on February 6, 2026 by Ron Miksha
Bees that died in the snow. A backyard tragedy in Calgary, Canada.

Lots of worrying going on this week, especially after the heavy snow that fell across much of North America. New beekeepers (and some of us old ones) worry when we see ‘lots’ of bees in the snow during winter. The black dots (above) are frozen stiffs – bees that left their hive and didn’t make it back, or maybe bees that died inside and were carried out by undertaker bees. To me, this is a really sad sight, but not a disturbing one.

If we assume that northern hemisphere honey bee colonies drop their populations from 30,000 bees in late October to 15,000 in late February, that’s over one hundred dead bees every day. We’d much rather see them outside the hive than piled up on the bottom board. One might argue that the dead bees in front of the hive might have lived all winter. Perhaps they were otherwise healthy bees looking for winter flowers. That’s possible. It’s also possible that these were weakly bees taking cleansing flights (honey bees will not defecate inside their hive unless the entire colony is weak and dying). The poor insects were not strong enough to make it home after visiting the bushes.

Regardless the cause, a few dozen bees in the snow does not generally mean trouble for the wintering colony. More worrisome is a prolonged cold spell. When it’s especially cold, the bees don’t even try to fly out to exercise their monthly constitution. That’s when we should worry.

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Arizona was Swarming – in January!

Posted on February 5, 2026 by Ron Miksha

I don’t know a lot about Arizona, but my niece, Monica Miksa King, has been living there for a while and professionally rescues honey bees. So, when my curiosity peaked about bee conditions in the desert during January, I invited her onto the About Bees Culture and Curiosity podcast. We talked about Africanized bees, swarms, pesticides, swimming pools, the Southern Arizona Beekeepers Association, and beekeeping in general.
(You can find our Arizona podcast here.)

This winter has been a bit wetter than last year in Arizona and honey bees are swarming already. Especially feral Africanized ones. I know that because I chatted with my niece, Monica King, who is just outside Tucson. On our podcast, we talk about swarming, AHB (the Africanized Honey Bee), serious pesticide damage, bees in swimming pools, and bee rescue work.

Earlier in the day that we recorded the podcast, Monica had visited a hobbyist student of hers whose colony suffered a massive die-off. She described bees showing neurological damage with wings fluttering and bodies flopping. The colony was down to half a frame of bees, but nevertheless had started queen cells. Watch her sad video, below.

Regarding pesticides, Monica said that she herself reacts with burning eyes, burning nostrils, and a stinging face around pesticide-killed colonies. This happened while she was trying to help that suffering colony, so she was sure they were dealing with chemical poisoning. Monica’s student was trying everything to save the dying bees: probiotics, protein patties, syrup, comb replacement, robbing screens, reduced space for warmth. But Monica doubted recovery.

Tucson in January isn’t the shut-in month it is for northern beekeepers like me. While much of North America was buried under winter storms, Monica described her winter with lows in the 40s (5C), highs in the mid-70 (22C), winter rains in some areas, and wild brassicas and mustards (locally called bladderpod and London Rocket), already turning fields and pastures yellow. In rainy years, she said, the region’s bees can brood up early and swarm, especially where early-blooming plants like African sumac trigger buildup. As a live-removal specialist, Monica is already getting two to three calls a day (too many for her to handle alone), so she triages, passing appropriate jobs to her trained students.

Monica described her removal methods in detail: working at night for safety, using red light to see, preserving brood combs by rubber-banding them into frames, transporting brood and bees in nuc boxes, and using a bee-vac to collect stray live bees for later reintroduction. Her removals aren’t just a single visit. She spends hours in driving, preparation, cleanup, rehabilitation, feeding, and requeening.

this podcast episode 

There are already over 75 episodes of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity. And you can listen to all of them completely free. I’m amazed that I have so many already. Sort of like when you are extracting honey. At first, just a few drops piddle out of the extractor, then a few hours later, you have some containers filled. Soon, a big truck arrives to haul off a semi load of 65 big steel drums of honey. It’s been like this with the podcast.

By now, almost everyone knows how to access a podcast. Mine – About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity – can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, iHeart Radio, Player FM, Deezer, and a dozen other places – including this special website for my podcast. Go to your favourite app on your phone or computer and enjoy.

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