June 14, 2021
Charlotte Ekker Wiggins, author of two books about beekeeping and beekeepers, is our guest today. Her first book, Bee Club Basics, Or How To Start A Bee Club, dealt with managing teachers mentors, students, classes and the b…
June 7, 2021
In this episode, we talk with Margaret Lombard (CEO) and Catherine Barry (Dir. of Marketing) from the National Honey Board. The NHB is an organization designed with the express purpose of marketing honey. There are 10 Board …
May 31, 2021
Today, we invite Dr. Robert E. Page, Jr. to the podcast to talk about his research on honey bee genetics and his new book, The Art Of The Bee. Shaping the environment from Landscapes to Societies. Rob is an Emeritus profess…
May 24, 2021
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 tha…
May 17, 2021
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 Langstr…
May 10, 2021
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 hi…
May 3, 2021
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…
April 26, 2021
This week, we start our multi-part series on hive types other than the standard Langstroth. We start with the Flow Hive. In this episode, we talk with Stewart Anderson, who, with his son Cedar imagined and then created the …
April 19, 2021
Dr. Sam Ramsey is back with us again, looking at all sorts of questions than bother beekeepers, and working with smart kids and science! Sammy hasn’t not let any grass grow under his feet since he was forced to return home f…
April 12, 2021
In this episode, we talk with Dr. Christina Grozinger, from Penn State’s Department of Entomology. Her recent research and and plant growing season has confirmed many suspicions on the long term impact these changes have on…
April 5, 2021
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 A…
March 29, 2021
Meet Matt Mulica, Senior Project Director of The Honey Bee Health Coalition a group of more than 50 organizations who have come together to implement solutions to achieve a healthy population of native and managed pollinator…
March 22, 2021
John Miller is a 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 Centr…
March 15, 2021
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 t…
March 8, 2021
Today, we talk with Jessie and Bobby Louque, of Louque Agricultural Enterprises. Testing the interactions of pesticides and honey bees is what this company does on a daily basis. They have combined their passion for bees wi…
March 1, 2021
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 …
Feb. 22, 2021
Steven Coy, Executive Board Member of American Honey Producers Association 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 el…
Feb. 15, 2021
In today’s episode, we talk with Bridget Mendel and Becky Masterman of the University of Minnesota Bee Lab’s “Bee Squad”. Dr. Marla Spivak created Bee Squad as an outreach group 10 years ago in the Twin Cities area to help …
Feb. 8, 2021
This week we talk with Ellie Symes, CEO of The Bee Corp. We met Ellie at the recent Almond Growers virtual conference. With pollination hives in almonds renting for around $200 each, almond growers want to make sure they are…
Feb. 1, 2021
In today’s episode we talk with Ben Dictus, beekeeper for Bee Downtown. The good people in the Bee Downtown organization have taken bees and beekeeping to a new level of education, promotion and opportunity. They have combi…
Jan. 25, 2021
On today’s show, we chat with Kaylee Richardson, who runs the Farm on Quail Hollow and posts about her life as a modern-day homesteader @the_honeystead. She shares the nitty-gritty details of what it takes to produce most of…
Jan. 18, 2021
In this episode of Beekeeping Today Podcast, we reconnect with our beekeeping friends from Season 2, Episode 29. They come from across the country including Central North Carolina, North East Ohio, the western slope of the R…
Jan. 11, 2021
Marla Spivak is a honey bee researcher at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Her work has covered a variety of subjects over the years including queen breeding and disease prevention and lately she has been working …
Jan. 4, 2021
In this episode, we welcome back Colorado beekeeper, . Tom had a small commercial operation in Colorado in the late 70’s, running up to 200 or so colonies when he first started using two queen colonies. The biology of runnin…
Dec. 28, 2020
On this special Holiday Replay, we bring back one of our favorite episodes from the first season, when we invited Dr. Sam Ramsey to the podcast to talk about the Varroa Mite. Sam Ramsey is a life long entomologist. His inter…
Dec. 21, 2020
On today’s episode, we talk with Newfoundland beekeeper, Peter Armitage and Dr. David Peck, a Professor from Cornell University, David Peck. Those of us south of the Canadian border tend to mispronounce the name of that big…
Dec. 14, 2020
is a Germany based company that is in the business of testing honey for anything. Their US lab in Corona, California is led by Tobias Wiezorek, and employs about 35 scientists looking at the biochemical, microbiology, chemic…
Dec. 7, 2020
In this week’s episode, guest host Kirsten Traynor speaks with Emily Bondor of the Santa Cruz Bee Co about how she manages her colonies and those of other beekeepers without chemical intervention. Emily discuss the types of …
Nov. 30, 2020
Starting several years ago, Steve Donohoe wanted to find out more about beekeepers and how they kept bees. His travels took him to California, where he talked to Randy Oliver and Ray Olivarez, to Vermont to talk to Mike Palm…
Nov. 23, 2020
Protecting pollinators and improving the habitat for honey bees often entails planting nectar and pollen rich plants. In this episode, Kirsten talks with Calvin Ernst, founder of , who has been deeply involved with growing n…
Nov. 16, 2020
In this episode, Master Beekeeper, Katharina Davitt reveals the nutritional benefits honey bees derive from bananas. Yes, you read that correctly, bananas! We all know that bananas are good for people. They are full of carbs…
Nov. 9, 2020
This autumn wildfires cut through large swaths of Oregon, destroying towns, homes and habitat. In this episode, Kirsten talks with Sharon Schmidt, founder of Cascade Girl Apiary, who lost her home and apiary in Phoenix, Oreg…
Nov. 2, 2020
Dave Doroghy works in the worlds of advertising and sports marketing and lives on a house boat on the Frasier River in southern British Columbia near Vancouver. His discovery of beekeeping wasn’t the common story of being sw…
Oct. 26, 2020
In this episode, Kirsten sits down with Matthew Pettersson of , who fell into beekeeping after a chance encounter with a giant jar of honey in a New York City apartment. Fascinated by honey bees and the golden honey they cre…
Oct. 19, 2020
Marina Marchese is the President of the American Honey Tasting Society. She refined her learning and teaching skills in Italy and Raffaele Dall'Olio was one of her teachers. Today we discuss with them all of the aspects of h…
Oct. 12, 2020
In this week’s episode, guest cohost, Kirsten Traynor, editor of , 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. …
Oct. 5, 2020
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 Agri…
Sept. 28, 2020
If you’re interested in starting a honey festival in your city, you have to speak with Steve Rogenstein who founded the . A former event manager, he fell in love with bees and has used his unique skills to organize honey fes…
Sept. 21, 2020
Dr. Dewey M. Caron’s latest book, The Complete Bee Handbook is quite the book. Not a scientific text, not a how-to beekeeping book, but one that’s meant for all those folks who think they might want to keep bees, but don’t k…
Sept. 14, 2020
The conference brought together beekeeping luminaries like Mark Winston, Marla Spivak, Tom Seeley and many others. The event was created and organized by Bonnie Morse, who recently sat down to chat with guest host Kirsten T…
Sept. 7, 2020
In today’s episode we talk to Britteny Kyle, DVM, President of the Honey Bee Veterinary Consortium (HBVC) and Alexzandra (Allie) Mosel, DVM, who is the President Elect. Both are beekeepers and small animal veterinarians inte…
Aug. 31, 2020
In today’s episode we talk with Sarah Weiner, the Executive Director of the Good Food Awards Foundation and Mark Carlson, the Committee Co-Chair of the Honey Category. Sarah brings a global perspective to her position having…
Aug. 24, 2020
In this episode, Kirsten Traynor meets up with Dr. Rachael Bonoan, a bee biologist and ecologist. Bees have some unusual and quirky behaviors. They discuss bumble bee high fives, why honey bees like stinky, dirty water, and …
Aug. 17, 2020
Strong Microbials got their start producing probiotics to improve the health of cattle, dairy cows, poultry and swine. Their products improved animal food digestion resulting in overall animal health. In 2012 they became int…
Aug. 10, 2020
In this episode, Kirsten chats with commercial beekeeper Simeon Valkenburg, who runs a commercial operation with his brother in Australia. He talks about building up their commercial operation from scratch. They started with…
Aug. 3, 2020
Dr. Jay Evans is the Research Leader at the USDA Honey Bee Research Lab in Beltsville Maryland. He and the resident scientists there are involved in many projects, including mite studies, nutrition supplements for bees, quee…
July 27, 2020
How Bee Perfect Their Homes
July 20, 2020
Dr. Sam Ramsey joins us again to share what he has found from his most recent work on Tropilaelaps mites in Thailand. He has been looking at the history of this mite’s movement around the world, the biology and its life cycl…
July 13, 2020
This week, guest co-host Kirsten Traynor chats with Adam Ingrao, Ph.D, founder of Heroes to Hive. Heroes To Hives is a veterans training program he started five years ago. They train veterans, especially those suffering fro…
July 6, 2020
In this episode, we talk with James Wilkes and Joseph Cazier from , who spearheaded the World Bee Count program just completed this spring. Bee Count is an annual event that aims to identify pollinators around the world and …