Club meetings are on the first Thursday of each month at 7:30pm. Meetings are held at the Legion Log Cabin in San Anselmo, CA (20 Veterans Place)
September 3, 2015: Lilia De Guzman will be joining us this week from the USDA-ARS lab in Baton Rouge, LA…the lab that imported Russian bee stock and has done considerable research on their mechanisms of mite resistance. That, in fact is what she’ll be discussing…particularly grooming and hygienic behavior. For everyone interested in how some bees are taking care of themselves, you won’t want to miss this presentation. Meeting Video
October 1, 2015: Gadgets and Gizmos/ Auction. This evening filled with the ingenious inventions and discoveries of members is interspersed with offerings of silent and live auction beekeeping items. Tips, trips and quips make for a lively evening.
November 5, 2015: Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture Magazine has long had his fingers on the pulse of the bee world. If he does not see it all, he sees much of it, and he will offer an entertaining update before opening the floor to conversation.
December 3, 2015: Elina Nino is the UC Davis Extension Apiarist taking Eric Mussen’s place. She is working on issues of bee breeding and starting a Master Beekeeper Program.
January 7, 2016: Neal Williams, a UC Davis entomologist, is an expert on native bees and forage. He will speak on his models for bee habitat that will benefit natives as well and honey bees.
February 4, 2016: David Tarpy is an entomologist at North Carolina State University who integrates understanding of bee biology to help improve overall colony health. He is a popular professor at NCSU and a respected researcher.
March 3, 2016: Dr. Greg Hunt, Professor of Behavioral Genetics, Purdue University. Prof. Hunt is an entomologist, specializing in honey bees, who is both a bench scientist and a field researcher. As founder of the multi-state Heartland Apicultural Society, he has worked closely with the needs of beekeepers. He was part of the USDA-funded inquiry into CCD. He has a particular interest in bees’ defensive traits, VSH and especially grooming – the behavior of the Asian bee that is the original host of Varroa. Meeting video
April 7, 2016: Dewey Caron is an emeritus professor of entomology at the University of Delaware and a longtime organizer of the Eastern Apiculture Society. He is the author of Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping. He now lives both in Oregon and in Bolivia. He will share his hands-on expertise on the Africanized bee. Meeting video
May 5, 2016: Yves Le Conte is a premier European researcher. He is the head of INRA, the French national bee lab. After French apiaries were devastated by Varroa in 1982, Le Conte investigated the occasional surviving apiary and was able to identify traits in those bees that allowed them to rid their colonies of the mites.
June 2, 2016: Bonnie Morse will speak on the Broodless Project that she and her husband Gary Morse have conducted at the San Francisco State University Romberg Center over the last year. Longtime survivor stock breeders, the Morses have studied the propensity of some bees to break the brood cycle with the effect of depriving mites brood to multiply in.