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.