Bad Beekeeping
A memoir of commercial beekeeping, prairie weather, queen production, mistakes, luck, and the people encountered along the way.
About the book →Writer · Beekeeper · Curious Observer
Stories from the places where bees, people, science, and history meet.
I’m Ron Miksha, a Canadian writer and longtime beekeeper based in Calgary. I write about bees, science, history, landscapes, people, and the odd connections that make all of them more interesting.
A life with bees
Beekeeping gave me a subject. Curiosity gave me the rest.
I began keeping bees young, later worked commercially in Saskatchewan and Florida, bred queens, studied geophysics, and eventually returned to university to research bee ecology. Along the way I kept writing.
That writing became Bad Beekeeping, the Bad Beekeeping Blog, magazine articles, science and history pieces, and now the podcast About Bees, Culture & Curiosity.
Start here
Science, history, and bees
Writing about pollinators, ecology, beekeeping history, curious people, and questions that are usually more complicated than they first appear.
Read more →About Bees, Culture & Curiosity
A documentary-style podcast about bees, the people who keep them, and the surprising side roads connecting insects with culture and history.
Listen →“But none of this means that I know much about bees. Use advice and ideas you find here with caution.”
The approach
Curious, evidence-minded, and occasionally skeptical.
I like stories with a factual backbone. Bees are often the starting point, but the route may wander through ecology, agriculture, biography, climate, geography, old books, or a badly remembered piece of beekeeping folklore.