Honey Bee Obscura Podcast

It’s the beginning of a new year and Jim and Kim are thinking about New Year’s Resolutions. Almost everybody makes a few Resolutions every January – even beekeepers, but many times resolutions are ma…

What would you do if you received a call from a neighbor saying that your bee equipment was scattered across multiple yards? What would be YOUR first thought?

In today’s episode, Jim invites Beekeepi…

Not a lot of people start keeping bees without some outside influence. A relative, neighbor, college class, or getting a job in bees. Jim started out with a college class, to fill electives. Kim got …

Knowing what you did or saw, added or removed from a colony is useful. Whether that happened earlier in the day or the prior season. Keeping track of what, how why and when you did something in the b…

What beekeeper hasn't nailed together a hive body and thought, "Heck, I can cut these boards myself and it'd be cheaper!" Especially if they already have a wood shop with a table saw and a few other …

It’s winter time and sure as the sky is blue (or grey – as the case may be), there will be many dead colonies out there next spring. If not in as early as in the few weeks.

Winter kills in the US are…

On today’s show, Kim and Jim discuss the most common ‘complaint’ a beekeeper who sells honey encounters. This is true whether you are selling from the back of your truck, at a roadside stand or even …

Honey Bee Obscura celebrates its 100th episode with this release! Jim Tew and Kim Flottum invite, Beekeeping Today Podcast’s Jeff Ott to join them to take a look at 5,000 years of beekeeping history,…

Winter tends to have a bit more time inside than outside and one way to spend that time inside is to catch up on your reading. Jim and Kim talk a bit about the books they read, the authors and publis…

Why on earth would honey bee foragers go out on a freezing day in winter to collect water? Ice and snow everywhere, but there they are, trying to get a drink and bring some home for their sisters. Wh…

Without a doubt, some of the most peaceful places on Earth are bee yards. Tranquil, serene and quiet with only the soft hum of the bees fanning the air through their hives floating on top the silence…

When you’ve been keeping bees for decades, sometimes you do things because that’s the way you’ve always done them, right? But the world continues to change. It has to keep up with whatever is going o…

Does your state Agriculture Department have a bulletin they share with everybody on the phenology, or bloom dates, of the wild flowers, trees and shrubs that grow in your state?

Today Kim and Jim dis…

Beekeepers have a love/hate relationship with their smokers.  Beekeeper families don’t have split emotions… they tend HATE smokers and their lingering ‘perfume’. How beekeepers manage their smokers i…

Jim has pails of crystalized honey, but only wants enough liquid honey for his oatmeal this morning. How does he get that to work?

Kim has a lot of good ideas. There are pail blankets, band heaters, …

One of the first pieces of equipment a new beekeeper buys is a bee suit. If they don’t buy a bee suit, they will at least buy a veil. Stings on the face are not only painful (and memorable to all who…

Moving boxes full of honey is usually a lot of work. The bees aren’t happy, the boxes are heavy, it’s hot and you have all your gear on to be safe. The one sure way to make this easier is to use devi…

Harvesting your honey crop isn’t about keeping bees, in fact, it is hard work. It’s when you start questioning your spring decision to expand your number of colonies. On the other hand, it’s a good m…

So, what’s that thing you put between two supers to give additional space between top bars below and bottom bars above so there’s room for…something you want to add to the hive. Is it a spacer, a rim…

Post-harvest time is a good time to look for wax moth in your colonies. Believe it or not, wax moths are around pretty much all of the time. On today’s episode, Kim and Jim discuss wax moths!

Strong …