Podcast: Chilean Beekeeping with Francisco Rey
Francisco Rey, left, with Ron Miksha. This photo, from 2012, was taken at one of my apiaries in Alberta, Canada, while Francisco was visiting here.
Today’s podcast episode – Chile for Avocado Pollination, Queen Production, and Adventure – talks about the country of Chile, Francisco’s 43 years of commercial beekeeping, queen breeding, Francisco’s friendship with researcher John Kefuss, Francisco’s family-run bee farm, avocado pollination, avocado honey, exporting queens, and we talk about why you should visit Francisco in South America.
Some interesting points in this Chilean episode:
- It takes a lot of bees to pollinate avocados – at least 5 colonies per acre
- There are 1.2 million colonies of bees in Chile (vs 2.5 million in the USA)
- Encourage your crew to be very, very artistic when they paint mating nucs
- Bees in Chile pollinate kiwi, cherries, apples, almonds, avocados, and garden seeds
- Without pollination, a lot of Chilean beekeepers would have to quit – they need the money
- Avocado pollen is too heavy to blow in the breeze, so bees have to carry it
- Chile is one of the world’s biggest producers of cherries
- Apples and cherries need about 500 hours of cold weather every year
- Chile exports queens to Canada, France, Lebanon, Jordan, Spain, Italy…..
This episode was recorded in August 2025.
There are already over 50 episodes of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity. And you can listen to all of them completely free. I’m amazed that I have so many already. Sort of like when you are extracting honey. At first, just a few drops piddle out of the extractor, then a few hours later, you have some containers filled. Soon, a big truck arrives to haul off a semi load of 65 big steel drums of honey. It’s been like this with the podcast.
By now, almost everyone knows how to access a podcast. Mine – About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity – can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, iHeart Radio, Player FM, Deezer, and a dozen other places – including this special website for my podcast. Go to your favourite app on your phone or computer and enjoy.
Posted in Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, Friends, Honey, Honey Plants, Podcasts, Pollination, Queens, Travels
Tagged Avocados, beekeeping, bees, Chile, honey, pollinators, Queen production
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Podcast: Chief Crowchild and the Bees
Season 2 Episode 1: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Chief Crowchild and the Bees
Chief Lee Crowchild of Tsuut’ina Nation is a member of a family designated as the Keepers of the Bees. He tells us of childhood summers spent sleeping in a tent that carried the symbol of the bee. But it was not until later in life that he tasted honey from a hive behind his house when he realized how deeply bees were embedded in his life.
In this episode, we learn a bit about the culture of the Tsuut’ina people and the Chief’s honey bee apiary that helped build respect for the bees and skills, knowledge, and self-esteem for people at Tsuut’ina. You will also hear about a bee-welcoming smudge ceremony that still fills Ron with wonder.
Please subscribe, like, love, subscribe, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.
Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast
Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net
Posted in Beekeeping, Culture, or lack thereof, Friends, Outreach, People, Podcasts
Tagged Alberta, Chief Crowchid, honey bees, Tsuut'ina
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Podcast: Season 2 Trailer
Well, we said it couldn’t be done! We said our podcast would never make it to season two. But look at what negative thinking can do for a person’s success!
Hope you enjoyed the first 12 episodes of the About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity podcast. Season 2 continues with more great aimless rambles about bees and beekeeping. The next 12 episodes have guests talking about 300-pound honey crops, helping bumble bees find a home, controlling granulation, beekeeping at Tsuu’tina Nation with Chief Crowchild, raising queen cells on Canada’s westcoast, amazing BeeCube technology, and, of course Plato.
Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.
Episode website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/season-2-trailer
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast
Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net
Podcast: Bees by the Number
Season 1 Episode 12: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bees by the Number
Check out our latest podcast! In this episode, we manage to jump around the bee world by using the numbers 1, 2, 2-3, 26, 500, 20,000, 45,000, and 50,000. That’s a healthy range of handsome numbers!
One queen? Not always. What about zero queens plus laying workers? Or more than one queen? Did you know that some beekeepers quit running two-queen colonies because the hives made so much honey they became impractical to add supers on top?
Two words. Please folks, it is honey bee, not honeybee. Two words. Beehive, one word. Bee yard, two words. We explore why it’s important to use words correctly, then we get into a discussion of ‘robbing’ the bees and all the baggage that the word ‘robbing’ carries. Then we naturally start talking about witches.
Why 2-3 and the numbers 26 and 500? Then we go to some big numbers – 20,000, 45,000 and 50,000. You’ll have to listen to find out what those are about. Curious? Let’s go!
Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.
Listen here: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast
Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net
Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology, Podcasts, Queens, Science
Tagged bee legends, beekeeping, bees, honey bees, insects, Miel Carlota, Native Bees, nature
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Podcast: Moving Honey Bees, part 2
Season 1 Episode 11: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Moving Honey Bees, part 2
We begin this podcast with the capture of a swarm, details described in real time. The subject of Hutterites, a Christian religious group, came up when similarities between Hutterite colonies and bee colonies splitting was discussed.
Since we are talking about moving hives of bees, Ron has a neat trick to pick up a single-storey colony (such as a swarm) and move it inside the trunk of a car or back of a van. Simple, fast, cheap, and the bees don’t get out and get lost.
Ron describes a couple harrowing bee-moving incidents that involved truck malfunctions – brake failure on a steep hill and accelerator jamming on a busy toll road. Luckily, no one was hurt.
We talk about the Tesla truck, which probably wouldn’t be much good for hauling bees, then Elon Musk, Twitter, and the future of the planet.
We wrap up with an inside look at a large-scale commercial honey farm, Scandia Honey, and talk shop about the operation of 15,000 colonies of bees on the western Canadian prairies. So, let’s go!
Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.
Listen here: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast
Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net
Posted in Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, Ecology, History, Podcasts
Tagged beekeeping, bees, honey, honey bees, migratory beekeeping, pollinators, Swarms
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Podcast: Honey Harvest Time
Season 1 Episode 9: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Honey Harvest Time
After a few minutes pondering how some carpenter ants in Florida choose the profession of surgeon (sawing off sick comrades wounded legs), Bidzina and Ron settle into a honey harvest discussion.
This episode is packed with ideas and suggestions that describe four legal ways to harvest honey and one illegal way. Then it wraps up with talk about amazingly big crops and the three disastrous ones that helped persuade Ron to move on to a new life. It’s a wild ride, so let’s go!
Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.
Listen here: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast
Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net
Posted in Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, Hive Products, Honey, Podcasts, Tools and Gadgets
Tagged Alberta, beekeeping, bees, honey, honey bees, honeybees, Saskatchewan
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Podcast: Dogs that smell bees
Season 1 Episode 8: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Dogs That Smell Bees
We talk to Rose-Anne Bouffard, a bee enthusiast who trains dogs to find and rescue wayward bumblebee nests and to locate colonies with American Foulbrood (AFB).
Dog breeds and their amazing scent sensitivity are discussed. Bloodhounds are best for sniffing out bumblebee nests and honeybee diseases, but that’s not what Rose uses. Humans have five million scent receptors and can smell AFB, but dogs have three hundred million receptors. Dogs also use their floppy ears to stir up scents. The bee-rescuing dogs were trained through find-reward-repeat sessions. We discuss training a tracking dog to find AFB and the huge economic value that brings.
Talking about stings, Rose finds that controlling her breath and going into a meditative state when working around bees is essential. Without the proper mindset, apparently Preparation H helps with the bee stings you will get.
The questions of bee consciousness and a bees’ ability to sense pain come up. We agree that bees probably feel pain.
Finally, there is a big shout out to Alberta Native Bee Council, the Suzuki Butterflyway Project, iNaturalist, and the urgency for action. Rose’s bee and dog projects are looking for collaborators so check out her website to learn how to get involved!
Rose’s website address for Dogs Find Bees is https://dogsfindbees.com/ Let’s go!
Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.
Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast
Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net
Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, Diseases and Pests, Friends, Podcasts
Tagged beekeeping, bees, honey bees
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Podcast: A Beekeeper’s Journey – Cameroon to Calgary
Season 1 Episode 7: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Cameroon to Canada – Patrick’s Bee Journey
In this episode of About Bees, we are joined by Patrick Tefouet Tonlio, who was an agriculture community organizer and teacher in the African nation of Cameroon. Patrick now lives in Calgary where he keeps honey bees and has been working on farm and bee projects with the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society’s Land of Dreams (https://ccisab.ca/land-of-dreams/).
During his last year of high school, Patrick learned to work with bees from his grandfather when Patrick moved from the capital city to live in his grandfather’s village. Honey bees in Cameroon are extremely defensive, so most traditional beekeeping consists of making small bamboo hives, coating the boxes with propolis and wax as a lure, then putting the empty hives in trees about 3 metres (ten feet) above ground level. After wild bees occupy the boxes and after the nectar season, honey is harvested.
Cameroon has commercial beekeepers, including the Fabasso family, friends of Patrick, who operate 15,000 hives. Mr. Fabasso has designed a hive, also made of bamboo, similar to Langstroth hives. The Fabasso honey crop is squeezed by a press invented by the Fabasso family. Pressing the honey yields a high-quality honey that doesn’t need to be extracted and is never heated during processing.(https://teca.apps.fao.org/en/technologies/10140/).
Beekeepers may harvest 20 kilograms (45 pounds) of honey each year from traditional hives in Cameroon. But the ethnic group sometimes known as Pygmy people (Baka) harvest directly from wild colonies. To reduce stings, they use a special secret herb, rubbed on their skin. The herb? It’s a secret.
Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.
Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast
Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net
Posted in Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, Ecology, Friends, History, Hives and Combs, Honey Plants, Podcasts
Tagged beekeeping, bees, Cameroon, hive equipment, honey, honey bees, honeybees
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Podcast: America’s other weed
Season 1 Episode 6: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Sweet Clover: America’s other weed
Legal. Illegal. Legal. Illegal again. Sweet clover has quite a history. Introduced into North America from Europe about 300 years ago, farmers were once fined for having it in their fields. It can be used to feed cattle, but improperly stored, it can become a blood thinner and kill cows. On the other hand, the state of Kentucky was saved from bankruptcy by sweet clover. And so were some beekeepers.
Every acre of sweet clover yields as much as one-thousand pounds of honey from its nectar. Along with alfalfa and a few other choice nectar-producers, it’s a winner in the nectar sweepstakes. But this podcast also looks at an Australian beekeeper who found an even better plant. But we circle back to sweet clover and Bidzina reads a list of “Ten surprising facts about sweet clover.” Number eight is amazing.
Mostly we discuss sweet clover, but bees, horned toads and tobacco are mentioned. Let’s go!
Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.
Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: https://about-bees.org/about-ron/
Watch the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@ABCCPodcast
Finally: email your angst: ron@aboutbees.net
Posted in Beekeeping, Commercial Beekeeping, Ecology, History, Honey Plants, Podcasts
Tagged Australia, beekeeping, Grasslands National Park, honey bees, Saskatchewan, Val Marie
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Bad Beekeeping Blog 