What happens to beekeepers if Alberta leaves Canada?

Posted on July 24, 2026 by Ron Miksha

Alberta has a separatist movement with a minority (20%?) of people out here thinking Alberta should become an independent country, then join the USA. I talked about this in detail on my latest podcast (which also includes a recap about my backyard Calgary bees and some bee news stories).

Please listen to this podcast episode, my 99th published so far, for a bit more of the story. But, meanwhile, here are some of the key points that I cover.

What beekeepers could expect if Alberta became the 51st state.

1. Alberta’s bee border would effectively disappear
Canada’s restrictions on importing packages of honey bees from the United States have probably slowed the introduction of pests, diseases, and undesirable genetics into Alberta. If Alberta became a U.S. state, those barriers would likely disappear, bringing cheaper replacement bees but some biological risks.

2. Migratory beekeeping would transform Alberta’s bee industry
Alberta beekeepers could become part of the vast American migratory pollination circuit, wintering colonies in southern states before returning for the canola honey flow. While this would create new business opportunities, it would also increase competition from very large commercial operators and place additional pressure on forage and bee-yard locations.

3. Alberta could lose protection against excessive colony density
An influx of tens of thousands of migratory colonies could dramatically increase the number of hives competing for Alberta’s nectar sources during the summer. Higher colony densities often lead to reduced honey yields, increased drifting and robbing, and faster spread of pests and diseases.

4. Cheap replacement bees could weaken local bee breeding
Easy access to inexpensive package bees might reduce the incentive to overwinter colonies and raise queens adapted to Alberta’s harsh climate. Over time, this could erode locally selected genetics that have proven their value under northern conditions.

5. Canadian honey standards would be replaced
Canadian honey is produced under CFIA regulations, while American honey falls under a different regulatory framework administered primarily by the FDA. Alberta honey would also enter a much larger market where imported honey plays a far greater role than it does in Canada today. 80% of honey eaten in the USA is imported. That’s only 15% in Canada.

6. Varroa treatment options would change
Beekeepers would transition from Canadian pesticide registrations to the American regulatory system, where approved treatments and product labels differ. Increased movement of colonies could also speed the spread of treatment-resistant Varroa mites across the province.

7. Pesticide policy could become less predictable
Responsibility for pesticide regulation would shift from Canada’s national system to a combination of federal EPA oversight and individual state rules. Policies change when politics changes, creating uncertainty for farmers and beekeepers.

8. Commercial beekeepers could face much higher health insurance costs
Beekeeping is physically demanding and dangerous work. Injuries are a reality. A move to the American health-care system could substantially increase insurance costs for self-employed beekeepers and family-run operations.

9. Seasonal labour would become more complicated
Alberta’s commercial beekeeping industry depends heavily on seasonal workers. Many arrive under Canadian immigration programs. Transitioning to U.S. visa and labour rules would create additional paperwork, uncertainty, and higher operating costs during the changeover.

10. Canadian research and support networks might be lost
Alberta currently benefits from world-class Canadian bee research, diagnostics, and national biosecurity programs developed specifically for Canadian conditions. Although American institutions could provide some replacement services, Alberta would become only one of many bee-producing states competing for federal attention and research funding.

Also, I have to mention the latest US tariff threats. If they go into effect on August 19, 2026, a 50% duty will be applied to Canadian honey. American packers, who would have to pay the duty, won’t be able to buy honey from Canada. If Alberta were an American state, that duty would not apply.

Winners and Losers

Alberta’s beekeepers might get access to almond pollination, southern wintering, less expensive packages, a big domestic honey market, and American equipment suppliers. But Alberta could lose its geographic and regulatory separation from the flow of millions of migratory colonies.

The likely winners would be large, mobile, well-capitalized operations able to participate in American pollination circuits.

The likely losers would include smaller honey-focused commercial beekeepers, Alberta  queen breeders, operators used to uncrowded canola locations, family businesses facing private health-insurance costs.

Beekeeper leaving Canada?

If you’d like to know more about this, and catch a bit about summertime beekeeping in Alberta, my About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast goes into illuminating detail, so I invite you to listen and enjoy. The ideas expressed here on this blog and on the podcast are subject to refinement with my exposure to new facts.

I hope you enjoy this blog and the podcast episode! The podcast is available everywhere you get your podcasts (Spotify, Apple, Podbean, Deezer, Dasher) . . . and online at this link.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/about-bees-culture-curiosity/id1760959092

Posted in Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, Culture, or lack thereof, Honey, Podcasts, Strange, Odd Stuff | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The 3-in-1 Bee Tree: Linden, Lime, and Basswood

Posted on July 9, 2026 by Ron Miksha
Ivan Mikša in 1975 with his 1945 Pennsylvania basswood in bloom

Basswood is nice, if you don’t mind hanging around with a tree accused of murdering millions of bees. Falsely accused. For over a hundred years, people have found dead bumble bees under basswood trees. Starved? Poisoned? Do you remember the Great Bee Poisoning of 2013, over in Oregon? Over 50,000 dead bumble bees were found under basswood trees in a Target store parking lot. You might want to blame the tree’s poisonous nectar, but should you? Maybe the deaths are the result of the world-wide neonicotinoid conspiracy to end life on Earth. My own thoughts are leaning that way.

I have just released a timely podcast episode about basswood, which is either blooming or just finishing its blossoms today across most of the northern hemisphere. I hope you can listen, maybe on your way to work, to the bee yard, while washing your hair, or driving over to Papa John’s for pizza.

Here’s a link to the podcast.

Basswood, also known as linden or lime, is so special that it needs at least three names. Actually five names, if we include the scientific Tilia and the colloquial Bee Tree.

During ideal weather, big beautiful bountiful basswood blossoms pump out astonishing amounts of nectar, yielding one of the world’s finest white honeys. Early beekeepers told stories of colonies gaining more than 600 pounds per colony in a single season during exceptional basswood flows.

Yet the tree gives more than honey. Across Europe, families have long gathered its blossoms to make sleepy-time linden-flower tea. Woodcarvers like its soft, workable wood, while Indigenous peoples used its strong inner bark (called bast) to make ropes, baskets, and shoe laces for the snowshoes they invented.

I won’t detail everything there is to know about basswood on this blog, but my About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast goes into insufferable fatiguing detail, so I invite you to listen and enjoy. I researched botany, history, beekeeping, and beekeepers and I revived memories from Scotland, Germany, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Alberta to tell the story of basswood.

Perhaps, after listening, you’ll plant one of these trees yourself.

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/about-bees-culture-curiosity/id1760959092

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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

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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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