MBP Testing for Journeyman and Master levels will be held June 26, 2021. Only written tests will be offered at this time. Pre-registration is mandatory. Limited space available. Email mbp@ncbeekeepers.org to start the registration process and to receive additional details. CDC guidelines will be followed. All registrants must sign a “Waiver of Liability”. Registration will close June 11, 2021.
Additional MBP advanced level testing is now open for registration. The new date is July 24, 2021 and will be held at Alamance County Center in Burlington, NC. Both written and practical exams will be offered. Pre-registration is mandatory. Limited space available. Email mbp@ncbeekeepers.org to start the registration process and to receive additional details. Face coverings will be required and social distancing protocols will be followed. All registrants must sign a “Waiver of Liability”. Registration will close Friday, July 9, 2021.
After winning 6 hives in a poker game, Sam Comfort worked for several years in commercial beekeeping across America. He started Anarchy Apiaries in 2005 to explore permaculture ideas of low input natural cycles. He breeds queen from hardy survivors, experiments with splitting techniques, and messes around with hive designs. So the mission is to 1) make more beehives than there are televisions, and 2) have a good time, all the time (with bees). Anarchy Apiaries runs around 1000 hives that split seasonally into around 2000 mating nucs with no treatments, minimal feeding, and do-it-yourself hive boxes in New York and Florida and spots in between. Through teaching independent, biological beekeeping, he hopes to make it more affordable, approachable, and enjoyable; thus, bring the means of production back to the beekeeper.
Dr. Margaret J. Couvillon is a broadly trained bee researcher with a particular interest in the foraging and recruitment behaviors of the honey bee. I earned my undergraduate degree from Loyola University in New Orleans (B.S. in Biology, minor in Chemistry) and then spent a year as an AmeriCorps *NCCC volunteer. I completed a M.S. in Neurobiology at Duke University before moving overseas for my Ph.D. with Professor Francis Ratnieks at the University of Sheffield, where I investigated mechanisms of nestmate recognition in honey bees and stingless bees. As a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Anna Dornhaus at the University of Arizona, I investigated proximate and ultimate explanations for worker size variation in the bumble bee Bombus impatiens. For a second postdoc, I rejoined the lab of Francis Ratnieks, now at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. There I worked to develop the honey bee, in particular its waggle dance communication, as a bioindicator for the “health” of the British landscape.
Mike Palmer bought his first two packages of bees from FW Jones Company of Quebec in 1974. They cost $10.50 delivered. Neither colony made it through the first winter, but he kept trying and built up to 200 hives by 1981.