Episodes
Nearly 20 years ago, Cedar Anderson set out to design an easier way to get honey from his beehives. Together with his father, Stu, he invented the Flow Hive—a revolutionary hive that lets beekeepers get "honey on tap." With over $13 million in pre-orders, his crowdfunding campaign is was one of the most successful in history. The innovative hive has drawn both admission and criticism from the beekeeping community. In this episode, Cedar walks us through the highs and lows of his...
Published 04/07/22
Published 04/07/22
What does it take to create a virtual world for bees that lets us study how they learn? Gregory Lafon is at the forefront of using this technique to study honey bee cognition. In this episode, he discusses the challenges involved in building VR for bees and what we stand to learn. Gregory Lafon is a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Toulouse. Read his full paper and see photos of the VR setup here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00630-x Help support the podcast by...
Published 11/27/21
The circadian clock is just as essential for bees as it is for humans. Bees rely on their sense of time to remember where flowers are, when's the best time to eat from them, and how to get home. But what happens if those flowers have pesticides on them?
Published 10/19/21
Kamal Bell left his full-time job as a teacher to turn a 12-acre piece of land into a profitable farm and honeybee apiary. The goal? Educate young farmers and increase access to fresh produce for minorities affected by food deserts. In this episode, Kamal tells the story of how Sankofa Farms came to be.
Published 02/14/21
Cassie Cichorz is the Asian Giant Hornet outreach and education specialist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture. In this episode, she tells the story of how her team used tracking technology to follow a hornet back to its nest—then what they did to eradicate it. If you’re in Washington and come across what you believe is an Asian Giant Hornet, you can report it to the WSDA by calling 1-800-443-6684.
Published 01/18/21
Dr. Scarlett Howard is a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin University in Melbourne Australia. She’s asking the question: can bees do math? In this episode, she talks to us about how she teaches bees about zero, addition, and subtraction.
Published 01/18/21
There are millions of dollars being poured into trying to pass off cheap syrup as honey. Jim Gawenis is trying to stop it. He is the CEO and chief chemist of Sweetwater Science Labs, the only lab in the USA that uses Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) to ensure the authenticity of honey.
Published 01/18/21
As the research leader of the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman has received grants for her research in excess of $6 million. In this episode, she shares how a deadly parasitic insect has overtaken honeybee colonies across the world and what we can do to stop it.
Published 12/12/20
Published 12/01/20