Author Archives: Ron Miksha

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About Ron Miksha

Ron Miksha is a bee ecologist working at the University of Calgary. He is also a geophysicist and does a bit of science writing and blogging. Ron has worked as a radio broadcaster, a beekeeper, and Earth scientist. (Ask him about seismic waves.) He's based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Teaching Bees

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Ron Miksha

I presented beekeeping to my daughter’s Grade 1 class today. It worked really well. I have two kids at the same elementary school, the older already in Grade 5. So he helped carry in the materials we used, and both … Continue reading →

Posted in Friends, Outreach | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Death of a Young Beekeeper

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Ron Miksha

I heard today, rather belatedly, of the death of a young beekeeper. Jason Escapule was only 39. He lived south of us, down in Idaho, where he ran one of the largest round comb honey bee farms in North America. … Continue reading →

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80 Years in the Bees

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Ron Miksha

What would it be like to keep bees for 80 years? You could ask 92-year-old George Birks, who started back in the 1920s. The price of a loaf of bread was 9 cents; a pound of sugar was 7 cents; … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, History, People | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Fire in the Shop

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Ron Miksha

A couple of weeks ago, a warehouse fire destroyed a bee outfit’s shop at an old kibbutz in Israel. A dozen hives were lost, along with processing equipment and supers. The kibbutz was founded in 1934 by progressives from Poland … Continue reading →

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Mount Everest’s Beekeeper

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Ron Miksha

Today is the 60th Anniversary of The Conquest of Everest. It was 1953, Queen Elizabeth was just about to begin her first day on the job as queen of the world’s imperial empire. In 1953, a typical TV was a … Continue reading →

Posted in Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, History, People, Strange, Odd Stuff | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Frightfully Slow

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Ron Miksha

Canada’s spring has been frightfully slow this year. Snow was on the menu coast-to-coast-to-coast in April and early May. As seasoned beekeepers will admit, wintering bees at our latitude is not too hard until mid-March. In springtime, cold damp windy … Continue reading →

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Honey Massage

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Ron Miksha

Here’s a new twist on the old fashioned Honey Massage. This one actually uses old-fashioned honey. The sticky massage seems to be increasingly popular in Europe, judging by the YouTube videos from Romania, Czech Republic, and especially videos such as … Continue reading →

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Bud Burst

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Ron Miksha

Enjoying spring?. Soon you may have even more of a good thing. According to a detailed study published by a group of geophysicists associated with the American Geophysical Union, spring will start arriving 17 days earlier in the north, if … Continue reading →

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Rattled Flowers

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Ron Miksha

Charles Darwin was a famous geologist before he published his revolutionary evolutionary treatise. He was also a well-rounded naturalist. It was Charles Darwin who discovered that some bumblebee species gnaw into the side of deep-throated flowers, cheating their pollination obligation. … Continue reading →

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The History of British Columbia Beekeeping

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Ron Miksha

I found some time to read a book, A History of Beekeeping in British Columbia from 1950 to 2000, and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Like most prairie dwellers, I have trekked out through beautiful British Columbia as often as possible. … Continue reading →

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