About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

About About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

Bees of all sorts are the engines of agriculture and the glue of ecology. Join us as we explore everything About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity.

Publisher

Ron Miksha

Category

science · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Jul 2024

Latest episode

4 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

110 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   4 Oct 2026

   Building a Better Bee: Brother Adam to DNA

   Season 9 Episode 12:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Building a Better Bee: Brother Adam to DNA Brother Adam spent his life trying to build a better bee. Thirty years after his death, we can sequence bee genomes, scan more than 100,000 genetic markers and even edit honey-bee DNA. But have we actually made the bee better? This episode follows the journey from Buckfast Abbey to CRISPR — and discovers that genetics may have advanced faster than our definition of "better." LINKS: Tribute to Brother Adam: https://www.melissocosmos.gr/2016/02/tribute-to-brother-adam.html Progress in Bee Genetics: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/11/11/768 Natural Varroa Resistance in Europe: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33302465/ This podcast was Recorded September 2026 in Calgary. Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation. Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site About Ron Miksha: miksha.com (https://miksha.com) Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst:  miksha@gmail.com

2. 

   23 Sept 2026

   Getting Rid of Confusion in Beekeeper-Speak

   Season 9 Episode 11:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Getting Rid of Confusion in Beekeeper-Speak What exactly is a bee colony? The answer seems obvious. Until beekeepers, scientists and computers all need to agree. In this episode of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, we explore an international effort to create a common language for bees and beekeeping. Researchers working with Apimondia and the EU Pollinator Hub are developing standardized terminology and the Pollinator Ontology, or PolOn: a structured system that defines concepts and shows how they relate to one another. Why does this matter? Terms such as colony, hive, swarm, colony strength, winter loss, queenless, Varroa infestation, wild and feral can mean slightly different things to different people, research groups and countries. Those differences become important when scientists try to combine thousands (or millions) of observations. Along the way, we look at old beekeeping words, multilingual terminology, Eva Crane's pioneering dictionaries, FAIR scientific data, and the growing importance of standardized information in an age of artificial intelligence. Beekeepers have always exchanged bees, equipment and ideas across borders. Now researchers are trying to make sure the information can travel just as easily. LINKS: https://apimondia.org/one-language-for-bees/ https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0353382& This podcast was Recorded September 2026 in Calgary. 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:  miksha@gmail.com

3. 

   17 Sept 2026

   Bees, Climate Change, Catastrophe

   Season 9 Episode 10:  About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Bees, Climate Change, Catastrophe The tables are turned. Instead of asking the questions on About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, I become the guest on Brady Podloski's Catastrophe podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about honey bees, native bees, climate change, insect decline, agriculture, and ecological collapse. Are honey bees really helping the environment? Do managed colonies compete with wild native bees? What happens to bumblebees when temperatures rise, seasons shift, and flowers bloom at the wrong time? And why is a perfectly green suburban lawn useless to pollinators? For this podcast, I draw on more than five decades of beekeeping experience, including years as a commercial beekeeper and later research in bee ecology at the University of Calgary. The discussion moves from canola fields and commercial pollination to wild bees, bumblebee hibernation, fires, floods, drought, habitat loss, pesticides, and phenological mismatch. Along the way, I give a simple image for understanding ecological decline: slowly take away enough musicians from an orchestra, and eventually the music changes. A conversation about bees, climate, resilience—and why resilience should never be confused with invulnerability. LINK: Catastrophe - https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/catastrophe/id1772195133 This podcast was Recorded September 2026 in Calgary. 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:  miksha@gmail.com

Who has been a guest on About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Linda Symmes
• Megan Evans
• Ted Miksa
• Jessie Smulders

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

70,569

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.0 / 5

6 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

6 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 66 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

90

Social presence

0

YouTube

76

Engagement

31

Contact About Bees, Culture & Curiosity

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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• 

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Questions about About Bees, Culture & Curiosity