The BeeCraft Podcast

A low-cost breakthrough in automatically identifying the presence of the invasive yellow-legged hornet at a bait station with no risk of bycatch has been invented by Jon Semple -- hear how it came about and what will happen this season Who is behind BeeCraft illustrations? Meet beekeeper-artist George Tonge. Co-editors Richard Rickitt and Stephen Fleming guide you through the May issue of BeeCraft.

In this podcast special from Sao Paulo in Brazil, Kate Graydon of Bristol University tells BeeCraft about her latest research into the wonderful world of Brazil's stingless bees. They can bite, they can heal and some spend their lives thieving from their neighbours. In the March issue of BeeCraft magazine, Kate surprised readers by showing that honey bee queens lay different sizes of eggs depending on the amount of forage in their area.

The backstory to the April issue of BeeCraft magazine, with co-editors Richard Rickitt and Stephen Fleming. Video links mentioned in the podcast: "My Garden of a Thousand Bees" on BBC iPlayer (50 mins) https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002t686/my-garden-of-a-thousand-bees Skep beekeeping on Luneburg Heath (16 mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2IjNBbLESY    

Another look behind the scenes of another issue of BeeCraft featuring Broodbox contributor Peter Smith and Richard's unfortunate encounter with a goat. 

Co-editors, Richard and Stephen, and the magazine designer, Amanda, talk about the February 2026 issue - plus a cameo appearance from Dafydd Pett, and getting in the way of a famous person at the Constable & Turner exhibition at Tate Britain (which features a skep or three).  Subscribe to BeeCraft magazine at www.bee-craft.com

The editors discuss the January 2026 issue and let you into a few secrets. Subscribe to BeeCraft magazine at www.bee-craft.com

A BeeCraft podcast recorded in December 2025 with Professor Lars Chittka, bee scientist and world-famous author of The Mind of a Bee, an exploration of the tiny but highly sophisticated brains of bees. And now Lars has become a film star in The Last Bee. As co-editors of BeeCraft, Richard Rickitt and Stephen Fleming had visited Lars at his laboratories in Queen Mary University, London to speak with him and learn about the research projects of five of his students. An article about that visit and the astonishing research at the lab was published in Beecraft in June 2023. Lars recently surprised us by revealing that he had won a Best Actor Award in The Last Bee, an environmental film to be released in early 2026, so we were eager to find out about that and his latest work. He generously agreed to be interviewed and this podcast is the result. We started by asking him how he had come to appear in the film.