Too Hot for Bees? Arizona Heat, Drought, and Rescuing Bees

Season 9 Episode 4: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Too Hot for Bees? Arizona Heat, Drought, and Rescuing Bees

Southern Arizona is beautiful bee country, but it's tough on bees and beekeepers. Temperatures climb above 100°F, water becomes critical, drought can shut down forage, and the ground itself becomes dangerously hot.

In this episode of About Bees, Culture, and Curiosity, Ron talks with Arizona beekeeper and Monica King about keeping honey bees alive and productive in extreme desert conditions. Monica describes bees foraging before sunrise, using water for colony cooling, providing water inside weak colonies, modifying hive ventilation, using robbing screens, and waiting for monsoon rains to bring mesquite and other desert plants back into bloom.

We talk Africanized bees, nucs, bee removals, a sensational "100,000 killer bees" news story, and the uneasy relationship between managed honey bees and native pollinators. Monica also tells us about a beekeeper tour of a Bayer agricultural research greenhouse in Arizona.

It is a wide-ranging conversation about bees, desert ecology, agriculture—and what changes when beekeeping gets too hot to handle.

Enjoy this episode of obscene heat, killer bees, weed whackers, and GMOs.

Links:

Monica King Bee Rescue: https://www.monicamking.com/#/

American Honey Queen Delanie Craighead: https://abfnet.org/american-honey-queen-program/

Monica mentioned the documentary Kiss the Ground about soil, climate and carbon. Here's a trailer, you can find the film on line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3-V1j-zMZw

100,000 Bees and the Weed Whacker: https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/arizona-man-swarmed-100-000-021300567.html

This podcast was

Recorded August 2026 in Calgary.

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