Latest Flottum Podcast Episodes
Honey Bees and Native Bees (149)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - October 19, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsIn this episode, Jim, is joined by guest, Eugene Makovec, the editor of The American Bee Journal, to dissect the emotionally charged debate that's capturing the attention of beekeepers everywhere: Do honey bees harm native bees? This intriguing question unfolds as a complex ecological issue, lac...
Dealing With Fall Equipment (148)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - October 12, 2023 10:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsAfter all of the nectar has flowed, the honey spun and you’re just waiting to put the bees to bed for the winter, you might look around at the clutter of equipment in your bee yard, bouncing in the back of your bee truck or shoved aside in the bee hut. Is there a better way to store that equipme...
Barrel Hives with Jerry Hayes (147)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - October 05, 2023 10:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsThis week, Jerry Hayes sits in with Jim while Kim is out. In this episode, Jerry talks about one of the most unusual hive designs he's ever built and worked with... a hive made out of a old 55-gallon drum. We know honey bees will build their nests just about anywhere... but is this practical? ...
Archive Special: Dealing with Yellowjackets (146)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - September 28, 2023 10:00 - 17 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratings(This Archive Special first released, September 2, 2021.) Beekeepers are very often asked to help friends or neighbors that have “bee” problems…. honey bees, carpenter bees, yellow jackets, hornets, bumblebees and the like. But most of us aren’t exterminators. We don’t have the tools, the exp...
Listener Emails: Cutting Down Supers and Dealing with Propolis (145)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - September 21, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsIn this episode, Jim invites Beekeeping Today Podcast's Jeff Ott, to sit in for Kim to help answer a couple of recent listener emails. In response to a recent episode where Jim talks about dealing with heavy 10-frame, deep supers, a listener sends in a suggestion and a question. Jim gives this...
Moving Honey Supers in the Fall (144)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - September 14, 2023 10:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsThis week, we continue with the theme of Fall management. Kim is out so, Jim invites Jeff Ott, from Beekeeping Today Podcast to join him to talk about dealing with heavy honey supers that remain and prepping the colonies for the coming Winter. Jim uses all 10-frame deep equipment, including hi...
Prepping for Fall and Winter (143)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - September 07, 2023 10:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsWhat do you do when the honey is all harvested, but it is still warm and not quite time to button up the colonies for Winter? On today's episode of Honey Bee Obscura, Jim has invited Beekeeping Today Podcast's Jeff Ott, in to discuss what he does to prepare the bees for Fall. There are many di...
How to Deal With Broken Frames (142)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - August 31, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsThis is honey harvest time of the year, for the majority of the beekeepers in the Northern Hemisphere. Undoubtedly, you will end your uncapping and extracting time with frames with broken end bars, bottoms or even the foundation punched through or out. Do you save it? Replace it? Or... somethin...
Uncapping Honey (140)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - August 24, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsAfter building your colonies up in the spring, managing them through the early summer, collecting them out of the trees and out of the bushes after they swarm and all the effort maintaining their health… your goal as a beekeeper is to harvest honey. You’ve lifted the supers of honey from the hiv...
The Evolution of Beekeeping (141)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - August 17, 2023 10:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsWhat’s changed in the past 150 years or so? For some of us who have been around awhile, it seems like a lot. Most honey is still produced in the boxes Langstroth put together. Size and shape maybe different now, but it is all still, moveable frames in a box. Hive tools, smokers, veils and the re...
What To Do With Cappings (139)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - August 10, 2023 10:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsIt seems that everyone talks about managing bees and selling honey. There's also a lot of discussion about extracting honey - such as: removing bees from the supers, what kind of extractor works best, uncapping and even bottling. But what about all those wet wax cappings laying around? Hopefully...
Considering the Bee Yard Habitat (138)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - August 03, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsContinuing their discussion on the micro and to some extent the macro environment of a beeyard, Kim and Jim take a long hard look at what do bees need to eat, and how much should there be. They look at the weeds in the apiary, areas around the beeyard, and areas further away that may be a plus b...
Dealing with Harvesting Headaches (137)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - July 27, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsEvery season, it seems, is different than the last, making it difficult or at least challenging. Honey harvesting is no different: what and when and how and where to harvest a honey crop. Deep south beekeepers went through this a month or more ago, but the northern half is now dealing with unpre...
Dealing With Summer Robbing (136)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - July 20, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsIt’s the time of year when summer is nearly over, but the fall flow hasn’t started. Colonies are big, there’s lot of foragers, and not much to forage on, yet. A colony that is ripe for being robbed is usually small, weak, and not able to defend itself. When the beekeeper starts working these c...
Beehive Life (135)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - July 13, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsWhat else is in a beehive other than... honey bees? If you stop and look closer the next time you are in your beeyard, you will in all likelihood begin to notice all manner of living creatures sharing the beeyard space with you and your bees. Some, most in fact, are not a problem for your be...
Managing Mid-Summer Splits (133)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - July 06, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsIn this episode, Kim and Jim discuss the pros and cons of mid-summer splits. Are they good or are they bad? It can go both ways. Mid-summer splits are used to divide a colony for swarm prevention, colony expansion, or the equalization of colony populations going into Fall and Winter. However, ...
Dealing With Seasonal Bee Management Fluctuations (132)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - June 29, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsHow does a beekeeper deal with the seasonal population shifts, weather and resulting needs of the honey bees in their care. How does a beekeeper balance the needs of the colony with the needs of the beekeeper? The middle of that Venn Diagram is a very small slice of common interests. Mostly, the...
Summer Replay - Hot Summers & Hot Bees (131)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - June 22, 2023 10:00 - 16 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsListeners, Kim and Jim are busy in the bee yard this week and have chosen this episode from the archive, for your listening pleasure. Thank you for listening! It’s been hot in Ohio so far this summer (and a lot of other places too) but it’s also been wet. Hot and wet can make keeping bees a ...
Getting Your Bees Through Droughts (130)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - June 15, 2023 10:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsSummer is in full force in most of the country now. Nectar flows are on and the honey is starting to ripen in the supers. It is the time of year beekeepers have been planning for all winter long! Summer is pretty nice now, isn't it? Eventually, every location will experience a drought (espec...
Learning To Deal With Stings (129)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - June 08, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsAll beekeepers must one day, cross a threshold: dealing with bee stings. For some, it is a small, hardly seen threshold. For others, it is a major challenge that takes time to overcome. On today's episode Jim and Jeff Ott talk about learning to overcome the fear (though, not the pain) of a honey...
Replacing The Queen (128)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - June 01, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsReplacing a seemingly good queen can be a difficult decision to make. If her brood pattern is good, the colony temperment is nice, they've produced a good crop... and the only fault against her is that she is last year's queen... should you replace her with a queen raised this year?! There are...
Vanishing Swarms: Now You See Them, Now You Don't! (127)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - May 25, 2023 10:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsIf you've been a beekeeper for any length of time and especially, after your first year in your own bee yard, you've seen a swarm, looked away to pick up something - maybe your camera, turn around and they're gone! Just like that. Swarms are simply amzing and awe inspriring. We marvel at their...
Bee Trailers - The Portable Bee Hive (126)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - May 18, 2023 10:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsAnyone who's moved more than one hive, more than once in a season has considered... a simpler way of getting the job done. We've all see photos and videos of beekeepers moving around an orchard of some sort, using BobCats or other type of all terrain forklift, loading and unloading pallets of be...
Memorable Stings (125)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - May 11, 2023 10:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsIf you’ve been keeping bees for a bit, you probably already have a couple of stories about that “one time in a beeyard”, or honey house, or somewhere that gave a whole new meaning to the word “sting”. Teaching a beginner’s class is absolutely the best time to make sure your students know as mu...
Well... It Depends - Swarms (124)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - May 04, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsA lot of times, when somebody asks us a bee question, the best answer we can give them is, “It Depends.” In today’s episode, Kim and Jim explore the topic of Swarms. Where did it come from? Where do you put it? What do you do with the queen? Should you feed them? As they explore how to manag...
Marking Queens (123)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - April 27, 2023 10:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsOn today’s episode, Kim and Jim discuss all the pros and cons about marking queens. Lots of questions come up when you mention marking queens. For most of us it’s a no brainer. “Look, there’s that yellow spot, there’s the queen!” MARKING HER MAKES FINDING HER EASY, RIGHT? Yes, but how does...
What About Those Springtime Bee Yard Chores (122)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - April 20, 2023 10:00 - 19 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsDepending on where you live, spring chores were over a couple of months ago, or you’ll be finishing them up about the time you check this podcast out, so we’ll keep it short, sweet and important. You can make a quick list with a couple of questions. Is there enough food? When was the last time...
Lessons Learned: Memorable Meetings (121)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - April 13, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsAre you a club president or in charge of planning meetings for your beekeeping organization? They always go well, don't they? No... of course not. They don't. What do you do when they don't? In this episode, Kim and Jim discuss their most memoriable meetings where anything that could go wrong,...
What's This About Bees Eating Their Young? (120)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - April 06, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsJim got a call from a listener who had a question. She wrote, “I went out to my bees early this week, and in front of the hive and on the landing board I saw partially eaten larvae, larva skins and a mess, all over. What could cause that to happen?” Today, Kim and Jim discuss they reason why a...
What About That Pollen Flow (119)
Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - March 30, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 100 ratingsIt seems that pollen flows just don’t get the respect that a good honey flow does, do they? And you’ve got to wonder why? In today’s episode, Kim and Jim take a kind of long look at pollen flows, trying to figure out how to tell there’s a pollen flow going on in the first place. It’s easy to s...
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