7:00 PM: Basic Colony Managment- Conducting an Inspection with Joe Tripp

7:30 PM: The topic of this month's meeting is Darwinian Beekeeping. Darwinian Beekeeping is a beekeeping method that aims to mimic the natural way bees live in the wild and to minimize disruption to their lives. The speaker for this membership meeting is Betsy Spencer.

"My journey began in the summer of 2003 when my garden yielded the most misshapen of cukes. I had never seen a honeybee in my yard and decided then that I needed bees. So I spent the winter reading about beekeeping and in the spring of 2004 took the beginner beekeeping course offered by Wake County Beekeepers Association. I tend to take deep dives in any new interest and ended up shadowing Jack Tapp at Busy Bee Apiaries in Chapel Hill. That summer offered an opportunity to work for Jack running his queen operation and I spent the next 7 seasons expanding my knowledge of bees and raising Queens. I havecontinued since then running a sideline operation at my home in Franklin County. My goal has been to raise bees that are locally adapted to the area and have resistance to the varroa mites by using only non-chemical treatments and breeding from survival stock. I put my operation on hold this year to partner up with a bee buddy, Terry Wright, to take the concept of survival stock to the next level by following Dr. Tom Seely’s protocol of Darwinian Beekeeping. Terry and I have spent this last season preparing outyards, building equipment, and increasing colonies in preparation. We plan the spring of 2022 to be year one in a 4 to 10 year project. Terry and I feel that we are in a unique position to do the protocol and hope that it is a way to help beekeepers and to promote the survival of the honeybee population."