Author Archives: Ron Miksha
Rustic Hive
Furniture catalogs may have to add a new line – Rustic Hive. If you are like most commercial beekeepers, you’ve used bee boxes for desks, boot organizers, and book shelves. When I was a child, we kept bees on the … Continue reading
Is Grocery-Store Honey Safe?
A school chum sent me this: “With everything we hear about honey these days, how do we know how to pick out real honey at the grocery store?” I answered his question and thought I’d share some of my thoughts … Continue reading
Posted in Comb Honey, Honey
Tagged adulteration, corn syrup, granulation, pollen in honey
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Cold Bees
It’s not the cold, it’s the humidity. We hear people say this a lot. That’s one reason 20º Fahrenheit (-7º C) in the eastern US can feel a lot colder than -20º in Montana. Generally, it’s the humidity that makes … Continue reading
Posted in Beekeeping, Climate, Hives and Combs, Tools and Gadgets
Tagged humidity, wintering
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Here Comes the Sun
If you are in the far north, your bees are not quite at mid-point in their winter marathon. But days are getting longer. It is amazing how bees – and flowering plants – recognize even a few minutes of extra … Continue reading
Older Blog Posts
Dear Readers! This new WordPress blog site has posts from badbeekeeping.com, a site I’ve been running for about twenty years. If you’d like to read my older posts, please head over to the old site. I will eventually close it … Continue reading
Posted in Outreach
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Honey Bee Sauna: “Keeps Bees from Roaring”
A German “crowd sourcing” fund wanted 10,000 Euros to build honey bee saunas. Within a few weeks, they had over 60,000 Euros in pledges – that’s about $75,000. I guess that the contributors don’t realize bees can die in a … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Diseases and Pests, Genetics, Tools and Gadgets
Tagged Bee Sauna, crowd-funding, hive temperature, Mite Zapper, Russian bee, varroa mites
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15 Amazing Incredible Uses for Honey!
I came across a list. It’s one of those “7 Amazing Habits of the World’s Most Successful Dogs” sort of lists. But this one is about honey and the title wasn’t written as run-of-the-mill click bait (such as today’s headline … Continue reading
Our Pig
We bought a pig. We will keep it in Africa. It wouldn’t be fair to make our pig live in our house in the city. So Wilbur will be staying with a family in Africa. As I am sure you … Continue reading
Beehives vs Drunken Elephants
Drunken elephants have been a problem for as long as I can remember. Elephants are known to booze-up, get rowdy, and attack farmers – sometimes even entire villages. A herd of elephants got drunk on rice beer in Assam, India, … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Yards, Ecology, Hives and Combs, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged beehive fence, elephants, Lucy King, Save the Elephants
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Sterile Radioactive Bugs Arrive in Croatia
Why did a kibbutz in Israel ship 380 million sterile, radioactive fruit flies to Croatia? That might be the most unusual introduction this blog has ever used. Here’s the backstory… Ceratitis capitata – the lovely but insidious Mediterranean Fruit … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Ecology, Pesticides, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged BioBee, citrus, Croatia, Israel, medfly, Neretva Delta, radioactive fruit flies
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