Ever thought about becoming a honey show judge? How to prepare items for entry into a honey show? We have just the class for you!
The North Carolina State Beekeepers Association and the faculty of the American Honey Show Training Council will be offering the Introductory Training for the Welsh Honey Judge program on March 9, 2023, at the Union County Extension Office in Monroe, NC! The training will be held on the Thursday immediately prior to the NCSBA Spring Conference, and it will be an all-day affair. Program curriculum and requirements will be identical to those posted on the Young Harris-UGA Beekeeping Institute website.
Cost: $75
Time: 8:30am-4:00pm, attendees should plan to arrive at 8:00am
Location: New upper auditorium on cooperative extension grounds
The class includes: An all day training/instruction with senior honey judges and honey show experts, thumb drive with all reference materials, white honey steward/judge smock lab coat, certificate of completion of level I training in the Welsh Honey Judge Program, and lunch will be provided. Pre-registration is required for this event.
“ANYTHING GOES” will be our theme for the silent auction at the NCSBA state conference on March 10-11, 2023, in Monroe, NC. The Chatham County Beekeepers have taken on the task of organizing auctions next year. We challenge every association to donate a few treasures. No worries if you are not attending but would like to donate. Regional directors, our state inspectors, or a member from your association that is attending the conference can collect items for the auction.
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.