• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Search Projects
  • Help
  • Log in

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education

Grants And Education To Advance Innovations In Sustainable Agriculture
  • Grants
  • Project Reports
    • Search Projects
    • Search Project Coordinators
  • Learning Center
  • Professional Development
  • State Programs
  • Events
  • Newsroom
  • About SARE

Project Overview

FNC18-1145
Project Type: Farmer/Rancher
Funds awarded in 2018: $20,106.00
Projected End Date: 02/28/2020
Grant Recipient: St. Louis Beekeepers Sustainable Stock Apiary
Region: North Central
State: Missouri
Project Coordinator:
Jane Sueme
Email
Saint Louis Beekeepers

St. Louis Beekeepers Sustainable Stock Apiary: Local Survivor Honey Bee Queen Rearing Project

Commodities

No commodities identified (required to submit report)

For projects that don't address specific plant and/or animal production, click this button.

Practices

No practices identified (required to submit report)

Proposal summary:

This proposal plans to address the problem of the lack of available, local, survivor honey bee queens for beekeepers. We plan to address this problem by raising queen stock from local survivor colonies for sale to beekeepers and also to teach sustainable honeybee queen rearing practices to beekeepers. In 2017 we shared hive resources from our own apiaries at the newly formed SSA Queen Rearing Apiary and began practicing sustainable queen rearing under the direction of Jane Sueme, Certified Master Beekeeper. We tested our hives for diseases and used the pathogen-free colonies as starter stock for our queen rearing project. We had success in raising a few queens, however we need to explore methods of queen rearing that produce a higher quantity of quality queen bees and methods of “banking” those queens for availability to beekeepers throughout the beekeeping season. Providing queens from stock that successfully overwinters in our zone to local beekeepers greatly increases their springtime hive strength and honey production, while decreasing cost of stock replacement and apiary operation. The location for the apiary was selected because very few managed bee hives are in the area and it allows for easy access for field days and teaching workshops.

Project objectives from proposal:

  1. Produce 100 locally-raised and adapted honey bee queens that successfully overwinter each season
  2. Provide access to this local queen stock by making the queens available for sale to local beekeepers
  3. Document over-wintering success of queen honey bees produced, which will include two cycles during the 23- month period of the grant
  4. Share methods, outcomes and education with local beekeepers through field day workshops, beekeeping association email communication and meetings, a quarterly electronic newsletter to a database of the St. Louis region’s beekeeping community, social media and regional club presentations.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or SARE.

Primary Sidebar

Footer

SARE - Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education USDA
1122 Patapsco Building | University of Maryland | College Park, MD 20742-6715

This site is maintained by SARE Outreach for the SARE program and features research projects supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. SARE Outreach operates under cooperative agreement award No. 2018-38640-28731 with the University of Maryland to develop and disseminate information about sustainable agriculture. USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education © 2019
Help | Contact us