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Date: Tuesday, December 14 | Time: 6:30 pm | Location: Online on Zoom Topic: Open Forum Q&AA2B2 President Mike Nardelli and Mentorship Coordinator Jen Haeger will answer participant questions on all things beekeeping.
Please join us - our monthly meetings are always free and open to the public!Date: Tuesday, November 9 | Time: 7 pm | Location: Online on Zoom Topic: Irish Honeybee Conservation with Wild ColoniesMichiel from Boomtree Bees will share his experience with honeybee conservation in Ireland.  The main presentation starts at 7 pm, but feel free to sign in beginning at 6:30 pm for an open Q&A session. See our Facebook page or join via the Zoom link above. NOTE: Please post questions/comments in the Zoom chat. Facebook is not monitored during our educational meetings. Speaker: Michiel Verspuij from Boomtree Bees "Growing up in my hometown Wellseind, a little place along the river Maas in the Netherlands, I was always out in nature. From a young age I was fascinated with the environment around me, particularly trees. I was intrigued by how adaptable they are, their different shapes and structure and how useful they are to both wildlife and humans. This led me to go on to study Forestry and Landscape Management in Velp, Gelderland, NL. After completing my studies I came to Ireland in 2001 where I started a forestry contracting business in Galway. Throughout these years I became increasingly aware that things needed to change. Hedgerows were disappearing and biodiversity on farms was diminishing because of the intensification of farming practices. At this point I changed career and went into organic farming. Here it became clear that bees were vital for pollination of crops. With that in mind I started a beekeeping course and got a hive of bees. It soon became apparent to me that conventional beekeeping is more focused on honey production and is less concerned with what the bees require to live a healthy, natural life. I began to research and found that there were more wholesome ways of beekeeping which in turn led me to explore how bees live in the wild. Given the increasing loss of wild habitats I looked at ways to mimic their natural nesting sites in cavities in trees." Please join us - our monthly meetings are always free and open to the public!Date: Tuesday, October 12 | Time: 7 pm | Location: Online on Zoom Topic: Preparing Your Hives for Winter
Please join us - our monthly meetings are always free and open to the public!Date: Tuesday, September 14 | Time: 7 pm | Location: Online on Zoom Topic: Colony ManagementHow Your Management System Impacts the Health and Productivity of Your Colonies The main presentation starts at 7 pm, but feel free to drop in beginning at 6:30 pm for a beginners' Q&A session.
Please join us - our monthly meetings are always free and open to the public!August's Monthly Meeting: Mite Biting Behavior - How to Improve Your Apiary the Inexpensive Way7/23/2021
Topic: Mite Biting BehaviorDorothey will explain mite biting behavior, finding it in your state, replacing your queen inexpensively, and expanding your apiary. The main presentation starts at 7 pm, but feel free to drop in beginning at 6:30 pm for a beginners' Q&A session.
Please join us - our monthly meetings are always free and open to the public!The main presentation starts at 7 pm, but feel free to drop in beginning at 6:30 pm for an open Q&A session. To view take home points from this meeting please visit the "General Meeting Take Home Points" section of the members only tab.  Darwinian beekeeping is an evolutionary approach to beekeeping, one that seeks to provide managed honey bee colonies with living conditions that are as close as possible to those of wild honey bee colonies. The goal is to harmonize our beekeeping methods with the natural history of Apis mellifera, and thus allow the bees to make full use of the toolkit of adaptations that they have evolved over the last 30 million years. I will review ways in which the living conditions of honey bees differ between wild and managed colonies. I will also show how we can pursue beekeeping in a way that is centered less on treating a bee colony as a honey factory and more on nurturing the lives of the bees. Dr. Thomas D. Seeley is the Horace White Professor in Biology at Cornell University. He is based in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, where he teaches courses on animal behavior and does research on the behavior and social life of honey bees. His work is summarized in three books: Honeybee Ecology (1985), The Wisdom of the Hive (1995), and Honeybee Democracy (2010). He has also written Following the Wild Bees (2019) and The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild (2019). Dr. Seeley received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Dartmouth College. He received his PhD in 1978 from Harvard University, where he studied with Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson. He held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Society of Fellows at Harvard until 1980, when he accepted a faculty position at Yale University. He remained there until 1986, when he joined the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University. In recognition of his scientific work, he has received the Alexander von Humboldt Distinguished U.S. Scientist Prize, been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, received a Gold Medal Book Award from Apimondia for The Wisdom of the Hive, and been elected a Fellow of both the Animal Behavior Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His most enduring honor, though, is to have had a species of bee named after him: Neocorynurella seeleyi. Please join us - our monthly meetings are always free and open to the public! The main presentation starts at 7 pm, but feel free to drop in beginning at 6:30 pm for an open Q&A session. To view take home points from this meeting please visit the "General Meeting Take Home Points" section of the members only tab.  Presenter: Grai St. Clare Rice is a co-founder of Honeybee Lives, with Chris Harp. She is an organic beekeeper, with 16 years of experience, as well as writer/photographer based in New York City. Grai is a native of New York City and describes herself as a city girl with a country heart. After ten years as an Editor/Producer at CNN’s New York Bureau, and many years before in the film, art, and publishing worlds, Grai’s focus turned to beekeeping and writing. With her love and knowledge of honeybees she is able to use her talents to encourage a better understanding and appreciation of honeybees by the public at large and help nurture beekeepers to embrace a gentle spiritual approach to their care thru intensive classes, presentations and writings. Topic: During the course of evolution, pollinators and plants have been involved in a seductive relationship that has been instrumental in creating the fecund world we live in today. Honeybees are the most productive pollinators because of how they communicate within the community of their colony. Understand how honeybees forage and how they interact with flowers in their search for nectar and pollen. Please join us - our monthly meetings are always free and open to the public!  Photo by Lacey Ingrao Meghan Milbrath has a vision. In her vision, no Michigan beekeeper would ever have to order bees from another state ever again. How can you, as a local Michigan, hobby beekeeper, help with this? Step one is overwintering your hives successfully (i.e. Varroa mite management). Step two is splitting your hives in the spring to prevent swarming (and to help with mite management). Step three is to sell or donate your extra bees from those splits to other beekeepers in your community through your local bee club. Interested? Hear about the program from Meghan herself: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhVpOcsls4A. Or learn more at https://pollinators.msu.edu/programs/michigan-local-nuc-program/.
And, if you'd like to volunteer or take part in the A2B2 Nuc Pilot Program, please contact David Kazyak at dakazyak@gmail.com. |
