Mini Presentation:

Greg Lehman will show a video of his hive inspection and swarm catch at the College Settlement School in Horsham.

Recently, MCBA and CCBA collaborated to jointly  start a honeybee education for a non profit, summer camp for underprivileged city kids near Willow Grove. Thousands of kids will attend this 2 week sleepover camp in the summer and they will learn about honeybees and how valuable they are. 

Our main presentation :

Jennifer Berry

Research Professional lll/PhD Student

College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences

University of Georgia

For the past 18 years, Jennifer Berry has been the Apicultural Research Professional and Lab Manager for the University of Georgia Honey Bee Program. Her research objectives have focused on improving honey bee health, the sub-lethal effects of pesticides on beneficial insects and IPM techniques for varroa and small hive beetle control.

More recently, Jennifer has undertaken several ambitious campaigns to educate people from all walks of life. She’s volunteered in Central and South America to teach women and young teens the art of beekeeping in order to enhance their ability for better employment and hopefully improve their quality of life. Jennifer has also been instrumental in launching the Georgia Beekeeping Prison Program by certifying inmates through the University of Georgia Master Beekeeper Program. In little over a year, 5 prisons have been added to the fold and are now teaching beekeeping behind bars. Numerous classes have already been certified, with many more to come. Plus, the prison program is striving to become as self-sustaining as possible, with each prison responsible for supplying something to the mix: queens, bees and/or woodenware. And finally she has been dutifully educating the public about the importance of pollinators and other beneficial insects and how to encourage their populations.

Jennifer is a regular columnist for Bee Culture magazine and occasionally for other publications across the pond. She travels extensively to speak to local, state, national and international students, groups and beekeeping associations. On weekends and evenings, Jennifer operates Honey Pond Farm, a honey bee venture which strives on rearing healthy bees while selecting queens for varroa tolerance, brood production, gentleness, and longevity. Several times a year she sells nucleus colonies and teaches how to rear superior queens at her farm in Georgia.

Topic:

Fighting for Our Bees:  

As we all know, honey bees have been threatened for decades due to the widespread use of pesticides, modernization of farming practices, and habitat loss due to human expansion. However, the most detrimental and hardest blow to Apis mellifera has been the new heavy weight challenger, Varroa destructor. We are now in round 13 and Varroa is winning. Unfortunately, mites are not going away, but let’s give our bees the best coach, the best training and the best knockout punch to make it to the last round. This talk will delve into recent research from the UGA bee lab and investigate relationships between varroa and our bees. We will also discuss plans to postpone the inevitable or more optimistically, to finally win by knocking out our opponent. Time to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!