In this week’s episode, guest cohost, Kirsten Traynor, editor of 2 Million Blossoms, talks with Michael Smith, Ph.D. Michael grew up in Panama, then went to boarding school in Wales, where he chanced upon a beekeeper with honey in a hallway. Together the two ended up launching a bee club…
In this episode, we have a return visit with Washington State Department of Agriculture’s Sven-Erik Spichiger, to see how our honey bees’ newest threat, The Giant Asian Hornet, did last season in the Pacific Northwest. The AGH was wildly sensationalized last year, picking up the moniker of “Murder Hornet”, which…
In this episode we talk with Dr. Gene Kritsky, who has authored or edited 10 books and over 250 papers on subjects as diverse as entomology, Egyptology, evolution, history of science, dinosaur biology, insect poetry and insect mythology. The Tears of Re: Beekeeping in Ancient Egypt is one of his…
Returning to join us in this episode is Tammy Horn Potter. (She originally visited us back in Season 2!) Not only is Tammy the State Apiary Inspector for Kentucky, but she is also an accomplished author. She has just finished her fourth book entitled, “Work I Knew I Must. Reminiscence…
Eugene Makovec has been Editor of the American Bee Journal for only a short time and isn’t well known in the Beekeeping world. He is working to change that. He grew up helping his father keep the family’s bees, so has a good background in the craft. He spent time…
In this episode, we talk with Dr. Christina Grozinger, from Penn State’s Department of Entomology. Her recent research and paper of climate changes impact on honey bee survival and plant growing season has confirmed many suspicions on the long term impact these changes have on all bees, both native and…
Today, we talk with Dara Scott of Advanced Science out of Galway, Ireland, makers of HiveAlive. Off the west coast of Ireland grows a variety of see borne plants, commonly called sea weeds, that have evolved defenses against their biotic pests that live in the ocean. Bacteria, antifungal organisms and…
In Part Three of our five-part Hive Types Series, we talk with Colorado Master Beekeeper and columnist Tina Sebestyen about the Long or Horizontal Langstroth. Horizontal hives are very much like the traditional Langstroth hives, which are vertical stacks of boxes, except horizontal hives are only one box high and…
John Miller is a commercial beekeeper based in Gackle, North Dakota and New Castle, California. His family has been keeping bees since 1894. Their season starts each spring when John and his sons take their bees to the almond orchards in Central California. In this episode, John gives us an…
On today’s episode, we welcome back friend of the podcast, James Wilkes, beekeeper, professor and Founder of HiveTracks. HiveTracks continues to evolve and grow from the ‘simple’ 2008 technology platform focused on recordkeeping for the beekeeper to an entire ecosystem of management decision making tools. In past episodes staring with…
Steven Coy, Executive Board Member of American Honey Producers Association (AHPA) returns to the podcast. This time, he discusses the USDA-APHIS call for comments on the elimination of the Chinese Tallow Tree and the impact the elimination of this tree could have on honey producers from Texas to Florida. PLEASE…
Our guest this week is Boris Baer, Professor of Entomology at UC Riverside. Boris is the recent recipient of a $900,000 grant from the University of California’s Office of the President. He is the Principal Investigator of a four-campus network of bee researchers and engineers to boost dwindling honey bee…
This week we talk with researcher and author, David Aston about his book, Good Nutrition, Good Bees. It’s exciting to see how much information on honey bee nutrition is becoming available. This is happening as both new research and looking at existing research in a new light. David Aston, and…
What better way to start Pollinator Week than to get the latest info on everything Pollinator from Kelly Rourke, Executive Director of Pollinator Partnership, and Miles Dakin, the Coordinator of Pollinator Partnership’s Bee Friendly Farming program. This week’s program also marks the beginning or Beekeeping Today Podcast’s FOURTH year! Our…
In this episode, we invite Dan Conlon back to learn how the Russian Honey Bee Program is progressing, since now is the time to consider trying packages, nucs or queens for the coming season. Arguably, Russians are the most tested breed of honey bee in the US due to the…
Joining us is Bee Culture contributor and author, Ross Conrad. Ross is a commercial beekeeper in Vermont. He runs a small commercial operation running about 100 colonies and all are treatment free. He makes honey, does a bit of pollination and does a good bit of teaching. He is the…
We continue with our five-part series on hive types other than the standard Langstroth, with Christy Hemenway. Christy has been working with top bar hives for just over 14 years now and has developed a good sense of how they work. She started out liking them because – It’s all…
For this episode, we invite back our regular regional beekeepers to sit down with us and discuss how their season went, what surprises they had, what worked, what didn’t and what they were planning for in 2022. In their discussions with each other, they talked about making comb honey, mead,…
Happy Holidays Everybody! Come on along and listen in to Jeff and Kim and Kirsten and Jim when they get together around the virtual Christmas Tree and talk about the Holidays, the good and bad for last year and what they hope will be going on next year. Kirsten Traynor,…
This is the third time we’ve talked with Sven-Erik Spichiger about the Asian Giant Hornet in the state of Washington, and this time he shares some history, enlightens us with the discoveries they’ve made so far, what they managed to accomplish this past season, and what they plan for next…
Today we talk with Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman. Gloria is the Research Leader at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona. Gloria and the researchers there are involved in several projects, but today we talked to her about just two that are both new and promising for beekeepers and…
This is without doubt, the most technologically advanced, commercially available, honey bee hive monitoring system developed so far. Mike James has a background in home automation and when he started keeping bees not all that long ago, a first thought was supporting his package bees with some insulation. And, to…
In Part 4 of our 5-part series on hive types other than the standard Langstroth, we talk with Paul Longwell about the AZ Hive. Paul has been keeping bees for quite a few years. He’s a Master Beekeeper and has bees in Langstroth hives, top bar hives and has a…
In this episode, we invited Dr. Brittney Goodrich to discuss what her research has found in almond pollination contracts. Brittney is a Cooperative Extension Specialist at the University of California, Davis. She is an Agricultural Economist and one of her favorite topics to research are the contracts between beekeepers and…