diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt
index 7310df1c8f9af36fe354f22a90bdce58efb49d2a..882ae32ca531d634a2d90886f33d1cd544a5ec25 100644
--- a/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -109,7 +109,9 @@ message (STATUS "Installing dependencies from Conan (this may take some time)...
 conan_cmake_run (CONANFILE conanfile.txt
                  BASIC_SETUP CMAKE_TARGETS
                  BUILD missing
-                 BUILD_TYPE "Release")
+                 BUILD bison
+                 BUILD_TYPE "Release"
+                 SETTINGS compiler.libcxx=libstdc++11)
 #
 # add cnpy temporarily. As long as SaveBoostHistogram does not save to parquet directly
 #
diff --git a/conanfile.txt b/conanfile.txt
index 645158b384218cbb653f08842c32ea917c9cb1fc..3579442077988e68869ddb4634d9010f118fac4a 100644
--- a/conanfile.txt
+++ b/conanfile.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,4 @@
 [requires]
-readline/8.0 # this is only needed to fix a missing dependency in "bison" which is pulled-in by arrow
 spdlog/1.8.5
 catch2/2.13.3
 eigen/3.3.8
@@ -9,6 +8,10 @@ proposal/7.0.4
 yaml-cpp/0.6.3
 arrow/2.0.0
 
+[build_requires]
+readline/8.0 # this is only needed to fix a missing dependency in "bison" which is pulled-in by arrow
+bison/[>1.0] # needed for arrow, and we HAVE to compile it
+
 [generators]
 cmake