Category Archives: Queens

Good Queen; Bad Queen

Posted on May 23, 2017 by Ron Miksha

Quite a few commercial beekeepers replace queens every second year. It’s a scheduled event, sort of like a birthday. Half the hives will get a new queen in 2017, the other half in 2018, then back to the first group … Continue reading →

Posted in Beekeeping, Queens | Tagged , , | 22 Comments

Long Live the New Queen

Posted on May 22, 2017 by Ron Miksha

Spring is typical requeening season. Sometimes you do it yourself; other times, the bees swarm or supersede. A young queen is the result.  When a queen is failing, you’re told: Kill the old queen and replace her.  Pretty straight forward, … Continue reading →

Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Queens, Swarms | Tagged | 8 Comments

200 Years of Dadant

Posted on May 20, 2017 by Ron Miksha

It’s May 20.  If he were alive today, we’d be celebrating Charles Dadant in a big way. Not just because he’d be exactly 200 years old today. (Though that would get some attention.) Instead, we’d want to recognize Charles Dadant … Continue reading →

Posted in Beekeeping, History, People, Queens | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

The Place to Pair (and pair and pair) with a Bee?

Posted on February 15, 2017 by Ron Miksha

Maybe I should have written this blog in Latin.  When I was a kid, I saw a bee biology book where the author switched to Latin when he got to the part about how queens and drones get together to make … Continue reading →

Posted in Bee Biology, History, Queens, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Meet the Family Caste

Posted on December 17, 2016 by Ron Miksha

Yesterday, I vented about honey bees and honeybees – the former being correct, the latter wrong. Today’s a new day, so here’s a new vocab issue. In today’s interesting world of blended boundaries, I thought I’d write a few words … Continue reading →

Posted in Bee Biology, Books, Queens | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

The Clumsy Beekeeper

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Ron Miksha

When I was much younger, my brother and I visited a world-renowned bee breeder who produced thousands of queens every spring. I don’t remember much about that trip to the north-Florida panhandle where every town had some elegant white clapboard … Continue reading →

Posted in Beekeeping, Queens | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Double or Nothing?

Posted on October 6, 2016 by Ron Miksha

A gentleman at our bee meeting posed a challenging question a couple of weeks ago: “What should I do with a weak hive? I think it might be queenless.” Well, it depends, of course. I’m continuing with the series of … Continue reading →

Posted in Beekeeping, Queens, Save the Bees | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Worker Who Would Be Queen

Posted on September 1, 2016 by Ron Miksha

Bees have a complicated social structure which some political scientists have sought to embrace. In the old days, people assumed that the King Bee ruled with an iron fist that imposed order, harmony, sacrifice, and unflinching duty. Now that the … Continue reading →

Posted in Bee Biology, Genetics, Queens, Science | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Packages Arrive in Calgary!

Posted on April 24, 2016 by Ron Miksha

Calgary has a hyper-active bee club. Members help members with all manner of thing. Equipment exchanges, educational programs, disease control. The latest big event was the arrival of 160 packages of bees from New Zealand. By the way, 160 packages … Continue reading →

Posted in Beekeeping, Friends, Outreach, Queens | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Queen, or Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Ron Miksha

Queen Elizabeth commands tens of thousands and lays up to 2,000 eggs a day? That might be an editing error. Dan Graur, a biologist in Houston, discovered that Reuters News Service once required that all stories about “the queen” should … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, or lack thereof, Humour, People, Queens, Strange, Odd Stuff | Tagged | 3 Comments