Author Archives: Ron Miksha
Mount Everest’s Beekeeper
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 Mount Everest, New Zealand, Sir Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay
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Frightfully Slow
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
Honey Massage
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
Posted in Apitherapy, Culture, or lack thereof, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged Germany, honey massage, Romania
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Bud Burst
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
Posted in Bee Biology, Climate, Honey Plants, Science
Tagged American Geophysical Union, Spring
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Rattled Flowers
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
Posted in History, People, Pollination, Science
Tagged Charles Darwin, evolution, yellow rattle
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The History of British Columbia Beekeeping
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
Honey is Honey
Here’s a honey of a lawsuit. Target Corp has been targeted in a legal action by a Ms. Cardona, apparently of somewhere in California, who discovered from her on-line research that the $3 bottle of honey she purchased at a … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Honey
Tagged California, labeling, lawsuits, organic honey
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Wild Bees
This sounds like an interesting job. You may have heard that there are about 40,000 species of bees in the world. Most are solitary, some live loosely with familiar neighbours, and a very small number, like the honey bee, are … Continue reading
Posted in Ecology, Science
Tagged bee species, Cory Sheffield, macropis cuckoo bee, Saskatchewan
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A Multi-player Game
How does one get 50 different bee-specialists to work together on a project? Sounds like herding cats, if you ask me. But that’s what agricultural engineer Lucas Garibaldi of Argentina’s National University of Río Negro is doing. The fifty researchers … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Ecology, Pollination
Tagged Argentina, bee species, Lucas Garibaldi
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Expressing Genes
What the heck is Gene Expression? Researchers working at the University of Illinois are tricking honey bees in order to learn about something called Gene Expression. As if the poor bugs don’t have enough to worry about, scientists are fooling … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Genetics, Science
Tagged bee communication, DNA, Gene Robinson
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Bad Beekeeping Blog 