Author Archives: Ron Miksha
Cuba’s Organic Honey
Long before the embargo and before the Castro brothers, Cuba was a beekeeper’s paradise North American gringos operating Cuban honey farms. Spain ruled Cuba for almost 400 years, but the United States took it as a trophy after the Spanish-American … Continue reading
Posted in Commercial Beekeeping, Ecology, History, Honey, Pesticides, Save the Bees
Tagged Cuba, organic honey, Pesticides
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TV Bee Outreach
How does your bee club reach the public? TV interviews are difficult, nerve-racking, and can go seriously wrong. But when Liz Goldie of the Calgary Bee Club took to the air with a local station, everything went seriously right. From … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, Friends, Outreach
Tagged Bees on TV, Calgary Bee Club, urban beekeeping
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Clipped and Marked? Part 2
I’m not going to suggest how you should hold a queen and a paint bucket when you mark your monarch. For that, I added a video, which you’ll find below. Instead, when your favourite queen supplier gives you a choice … Continue reading
Clipped and Marked? Part 1
If you live north of the equator, you’ve noticed the days getting longer. Your bees have noticed, too. Maybe you’ve already had your first late-winter inspection. Hopefully, you are not peering into hollow tombs, but instead you’re seeing bustling little … Continue reading
Bees are Meaner if Childhood is Miserable
Some aggressive honey bees were raised to be mean. Some bees, it seems, grow up on the wrong side of the honeycomb. Or, as one experiment shows, in the wrong sort of hive. Illinois and Pennsylvania researchers conducted a brilliant … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Genetics, Science
Tagged aggressive bees, epigenetics, experiment, nutrition
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Bumper Crop
The numbers are in and the prize goes to Alberta. Alberta, a province in western Canada, has once again won the prestigious honey production award. For those of us who learnt beekeeping where 50-pound crops are the norm (in my case, … Continue reading
Groundhog Day Again
When I was a kid growing up in western Pennsylvania, Groundhog Day was a big deal. It didn’t hurt that it was also our elementary school principal’s birthday. We didn’t get the whole day off (unless Feb 2 was on … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology, Humour, Strange, Odd Stuff, Swarms
Tagged bee legends, Calgary, groundhog day, winter
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Ozone and the Bees
Sitting in traffic, smelling everyone else’s exhaust (you know yours doesn’t stink), you begin to worry about the bees out there. They smell the fumes, too. But if you look closely, you won’t see them gasping or coughing. That’s only … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Ecology, Honey Plants
Tagged Brassica nigra, mustard seed, Ozone, pollution
3 Comments
Resistance is Futile
The Hive Mind, the idea that an entire colony operates like a single organism with one mind, is a notion that’s been picked up by people who don’t usually wear bee veils. Some of these folks are screenplay writers while … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Science, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged Borg, collective wisdom, hive mind, Tom Seeley, Wadey
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Putin Likes Organic Food
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has suggested that anyone who sells or grows genetically modified foods on his turf should face a few years farming in Siberia. He has proclaimed Russia will be GMO-free and he’d like to see his farmers raise … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology, Genetics, History, Pesticides, Save the Bees, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged Charles Darwin, epigenetics, GMOs, Putin, Russia
2 Comments
Bad Beekeeping Blog 