Season 4 Episode 4: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Thousands and Thousands and Thousands of Queens

Dedicated to the memory of Florida queen breeder David Miksa

This episode was recorded two days before David Miksa passed away. His son Ted and I chat about this remarkable beekeeping family and about queen breeding in general. We jump right into our conversation, catching up with Ted at the end of a long day of his work on the farm.

Among the topics covered are running mating nucs through the hot Florida summer; banking queens in Florida (and how that might work in Canada); queen importation into Canada; the way that inbreeding stock can yield unfortunate surprise results. We note that about 10% of all the managed honey bee colonies in America have queens (or queen cells) that originated at Miksa honey farm in Lake County, Florida - so we talk about the logistics of producing and selling all those queens, the nine stock lines involved and strategies to keep Africanized stock out of those queens.

We wrap up noting the importance of nutrition, especially for nurse bees that are feeding developing queen larvae. And the sage advice: “Take care of the bees and they’ll take care of you.”

This episode was recorded in May, 2025.

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/

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 3: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bee Thievery

Pay close attention and you may pick up a few clues to reduce honey bee hive thefts. Listen even more closely and you may pick up tips on how to steal colonies. But please don't. It's not worth time in the big house.

We also chat about the apiary in a box (BeeCube), Apimondia's upcoming conference in Denmark, Ron's queen-rearing presentation for Western Apicultural Society, a scheme to raise queens from one single colony (Ron is a skeptic), and ideas around swapping Canadian bees for southern hemisphere bees once a year. But mostly we talk about a honey bee heist that happened here in Alberta, Canada.

This episode was recorded in May, 2025.

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/

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net

Season 4 Episode 2: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – A Rose among the Bees

With Rose, our conversation starts with a bee walking on Ron's neck, progresses to a stash of wax, some bee work, civilization, parasites, and beeswax, beeswax church candles, bees coming to America, mead, monks, America's first pauper (who was a beekeeper), tomato pollination, Rose's training of dogs to find foulbrood, and so much more.

This episode was recorded in April, 2025.

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/

Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: ron@aboutbees.net