Training master beekeepers to improve honey bee management through local queen production

Commodities

Practices

The goal of this project is to mitigate the unsustainable
die-offs of honey bee colonies every year by fostering a local
supply of queens and starter colonies for regional beekeepers. By
training Master Beekeepers in collaboration with the state
beekeeper’s association on basic and advanced queen-rearing
techniques, we will enable participants to take advantage of the
economic opportunities of supplying locally sourced queens. It is
well known that honey bees are indispensable to agriculture
through their pollination services, and that their colonies are
witnessing unsustainable mortality every year. One major factor
in this crisis is the reduced longevity of queens, stemming in
part from the lack of a supply in locally produced queens,
nucleus colonies, and packages. Training numerous small-scale,
local queen producers will help reduce colony mortality because
of poor queens that are better adapted to local environments
(rather than being produced and shipped from states like HI and
CA). Developing numerous “microbreeders” within the region will
provide new economic opportunities in agriculture, improve the
overall health of the honey bee population, help secure our needs
for pollination, and stimulate a new niche economy to bolster a
challenged beekeeping community and apiculture industry.

The goal of this project is to mitigate the unsustainable
die-offs of honey bee colonies every year by fostering a local
supply of queens and starter colonies for regional beekeepers. It
is well established that first-year colony survival is much
higher for those started from small nucleus colonies (“nucs”)
compared to traditional methods (e.g., packaged bees). The major
bottleneck in being able to supply new nucs is the production of
queens, which are typically produced by large-scale operations
out of state. By training Master Beekeepers in collaboration with
the state beekeeper’s association on basic and advanced
queen-rearing techniques will enable participants to take
advantage of the economic opportunities of supplying locally
sourced queens, thereby improving colony success and ensuring a
more reliable population of managed pollinators.

• Objective 1: offer initial training for would-be queen
  producers through our online Beekeeper Education & Engagement
  System (BEES) to recruit intermediate and advanced beekeepers
  taking part in the NC State Beekeepers Association’s Master
  Beekeeper Program (MPB), specifically incorporating English as a
  Second Language (ESL) communities;
• Objective 2: in collaboration with the NCSBA ‘Born & Bred’
  initiative, conduct numerous queen-rearing workshops for
  participants in Objective 1 and other beekeepers in basic
  hands-on techniques so that they can raise their own local queens
  and not depend on stock from outside the state;
• Objective 3: deliver advanced short courses (‘BEES
  Academies’) focusing on how to improve overwintering success so
  that beekeepers can create their own “nucleus” colonies to
  promote the supply of local honey bees every year with the
  potential to grow into businesses;
• Objective 4: hold high-level, multi-day, bee-breeding clinics
  for a selected population of sideliner queen producers to train
  them in basic genetic selection, business plan development, and
  breeding theory in order for them to create sustainable
  microbreeding operations.