conference – BeeManiacs

Pacific Northwest Beekeeping Conference

Washington State Beekeepers Association (WASBA) is organizing a conference for those interested in bees and beekeeping. Topics include scientific and informational presentations for commercial and hobbyist beekeepers. The keynote, which is free and open to the public, will feature Sarah Red-Laird, whose non-profit “The Bee Girl Organization” (https://www.beegirl.org/) promotes honey bees and honey bee habitat.
The conference will be held February 9, 2019 at Eastern Washington University, Hargreaves Hall, 526 5th St., Cheney. Cost for WASBA members is $10; cost for non-members is $35.

The keynote address (11am-noon) is free and open to the public.
Event participants are invited to mingle and enjoy mead and honey-themed hors d’oeuvres at local venue The Mason Jar, 101 F St., Cheney, WA, immediately following the conference.

Cost $25.
Event registration can be found via WASBA’s website – www.wasba.org – or on Eventbrite – Pacific Northwest Beekeeping Conference (https://bit.ly/2RHBWky).

Keynote Speaker: Sarah Red-Laird is the founder and Executive Director of the Bee Girl organization, a nonprofit with a mission to educate and inspire communities to conserve bees, their flowers, and our food. Bee Girl projects are focused on regenerative beekeeping, bee habitat research and education, and kids’ programs. Ms. Red-Laird is a graduate of the University of Montana’s College of Forestry and Conservation with a degree in Resource Conservation,
focused on community collaboration and environmental policy. Sarah also serves as the “Kids and Bees” program director for the American Beekeeping Federation. She is currently president- elect of the Western Apicultural Society.

Conference Speakers and Topics: Conference participants can choose from sessions in two tracks, one for scientific topics, the other for topics of general interest. Researchers from Washington State University, Eastern Washington University and the University of Montana will present on topics including bee feeding and bee gut health, tracking disease and pest management with a cell phone app, and controlling varroa mites. Other topics include mead
making (presented by BeeManiacs staff), integrated pest management, and improving bee habitat through plant choices.

For more information: Contact Jenifer Priest – jenifer@wasba.org or 509-270-2603

Farm and Food Expo

BeeManiacs staff will be presenting a couple of beekeeping related courses in the 2018 Farm and Food Expo in Spokane, WA.

For more information and/or registering for the event, please follow the Event Website link.

Western Apicultural Society Conference

BeeManiacs attended the WAS 2014 Annual Conference in Missoula, Montana.

We attended several beekeeping events during the last years but we have to say this is the best conference we attended so far.

General attendance was low, but the quantity and quality of speakers was top notch. If you attended this conference, you had access to most of the well known beekeepers and researchers that appear in the monthly bee journals. Even Kim Flottum from Bee Culture was there (with K. Summers). You would be sitting somewhere in the auditorium with Eric Mussen on one side and Randy Oliver on the other side, with Malcolm Sanford just behind you. Jerry Hayes, Bee Girl, the Honey Princess (ABF) were present as well as researches and beekeepers from Ireland, New Zealand, UK, Australia, Canada and Mexico.

The first day of the conference was dedicated to Hive Monitoring and different hardware and software systems used for tracking information from beehives.

The next couple of days were more conventional, talking about bee diseases, pesticides (pro and con) and updates on bee research over the last year. We had an interesting talk about climate change and its repercussions in beekeeping, which is probably the first time the subject was presented in a bee conference (as mentioned by several attendees).

We received plenty of information that we will be processing and assimilating for several weeks as well as several projects related to hive monitoring and remote monitoring systems that we will be pursing from BeeManiacs in collaboration with University of Montana and other associations and companies.

Next year the event will be in Colorado.

These are some random images from the event: