September 17, 2010
 WHERE: Temple University Ambler, Learning Center Auditorium, 580 Meetinghouse Road
WHEN: Saturday, October 2, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
REGISTER HERE
When you sit down for your next meal, pay particular attention to the bounty of fruits and vegetables that you have available to you. One of the founders of your feast is small, gold and brown, and pollinates one third of all of the food crops that we consume in the United States.
Honey bees are an essential part of our ecological sustainability. Honey bees, however, are disappearing at an alarming rate and while there are many theories about the cause, there are no clear-cut answers. One way to help keep hives strong, however, is by ensuring the colony has a strong queen. That’s where Bee Fest, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Honey Bee Symposium comes in.
The 2nd Annual Bee Fest, which will be held on Saturday, October 2, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at the Temple University Ambler Learning Center, will focus on colony health and productivity “through better queen selection and breeding,” according to Mark Antunes, President of the Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association.
“Our goal is to provide the latest information to beekeepers and the general public about honey bees and ways to facilitate their management and productivity,” he said. “Like any agricultural endeavor — be it animal, insect, or plant — you have to do extensive research into the traits necessary to thrive in a given area of the country. For honey bees, you want them to be highly productive, gentle to work with and disease resistant; a hive that overwinters well and survives in this area.”
For example, in our region, Antunes said, “there is a relatively short period of nectar flow,” which begins in mid-April and is over by the beginning of July. By contrast, the Champlain Valley of Vermont may have a nectar flow throughout the summer and into the fall, he said.
“You want bees that come out in the spring in a robust fashion and build up to top performance strength by the beginning of May. There are several subspecies of bee — the Italian bee is the predominant species used in this region as they have the traits we’re looking for to survive here,” Antunes said. “The Carniolan bee and New World Carniolan are also becoming popular. Just like in dairy farming where you breed milk cows to produce more milk, you breed bees to produce more honey.”
 Bee Fest, sponsored by the Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association and Temple University Ambler, has an ambitious schedule for seasoned beekeepers and newcomers alike. Speakers will include Jerry Hayes, Chief of the Apiary Inspection Section of the Florida Department of Agriculture and author of the “Classroom Column” in the American Bee Journal; Dr. Christina Grozinger, Associate Professor of Entomology at Penn State University; and Adam Finkelstein and Kelly Rausch, owner and operators of VP Queens. The Ambler Campus’ own Jenny Rose Carey, Director of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, will also provide tours of the Arboretum and the campus beehives.
During this public symposium, participants will learn about: honey bees and beekeeping; the latest honey bee and queen bee research, how to breed productive and hardy queen bees, honey and products from the hive, and bee-friendly plants. Participants may register for the event at www.montcobeekeepers.org. The cost is $30 pre-paid, $35 at the door, and $20 for students with student ID.
“Dr. Grozinger specializes in queen bee breeding and is working to develop a Pennsylvania queen breeding program — queens that would be bred and specifically suited to maximize the potential of the region,” Antunes said. “Jerry Hayes is an internationally respected and recognized apiary specialist who has seen every malady and problem honeybees are prone to in the United States — he is the ultimate problem solver for beekeeping in the country.”
New this year will be a full-day beginner beekeeping course taught by Jim Bobb, a commercial beekeeper, Chairman of the Eastern Apiculture Society, and past president of the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association.
“Jim Bobb started the beginner beekeeping course in Montgomery County and is a recognized expert in his own right. Essentially it will provide participants a ‘101’ course in honey bees and beekeeping,” Antunes said. “Topics for the beginner course will include the history and development of beekeeping; the equipment needed; how to order bees; where to place hives; a review of the recommended guidelines to keep bees in cities or towns; installing bees into a hive; and how to feed and manage the bees. He’ll also discuss honey bee biology, and pollen and nectar gathering.”
In addition to the lecture series and beginner course, attendees may also take guided tours of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, including the campus’s own hives. Participants may also explore educational exhibits from local beekeepers, an observation hive, beekeeping supplies, books, and local honey and hive products, which will be available for purchase.
 “The symposium is designed in such a way to provide intermediate or advanced beekeepers with the latest information on beekeeping while also providing members of the general public the opportunity to participate and learn quite a lot,” Antunes said. “For beginners who have never kept bees but would like to learn how, this will give them enough information to get started.”
Harkening back to the early history of the campus, where beekeeping was once a traditional course of study for the students of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women — the forerunner of Temple University Ambler — Ambler Arboretum horticulturists began their own honey producing hives in the spring of 2009. The four hives, which began with 40,000 bees and are now 150,000 bees, including four queens, strong, are tended by Grace Chapman, Horticulture Supervisor, and Kathryn Reber, Horticulturist, in addition to Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture students Kristen Brown, Jennifer Topper, and Cindy Culp. Vincent Aloyo, a member of the Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association from Blue Bell, trained Chapman and Reber in the proper care of bees and still maintains a hive on campus.
“Beekeeping is steadily becoming more popular for public gardens and it’s a nice connection with our heritage as a campus. Our bees have certainly been visiting all of our gardens; the Wetland Garden and the Community Garden, where our students, faculty, and staff grow their own vegetables, seem to be particularly popular,” Chapman said. “This year, due to the harsh summer conditions and the early blooming of many of our plants, the bees didn’t produce enough extra honey for us to harvest from our campus hives. Students and staff, however, participated in harvesting local honey from hives within two miles of the campus with Vince Aloyo. We will be selling this to raise funds for new equipment and more bees for next year — producing and selling the honey to the campus and the community is a great way to raise awareness about the importance of honey bees and beekeeping.”
 Last year, Temple’s honey bees produced 210 pounds of honey, no small feat considering that to produce one pound of honey, honey bees must visit two million flowers and fly 55,000 miles, according to the Beekeepers’ Association. One bee cannot produce honey; it takes the entire hive.
“As with any farming, you have to ensure that the bees have a sufficient food source, particularly in the spring and fall. In the spring, swarm control is very important,” said Aloyo, who has been beekeeping since 1966. “Swarming is a natural part of reproduction in the hive, but if half your bees leave, there goes your honey production. Of course one of the most important things in beekeeping is disease control and keeping the hive healthy.”
According to Antunes, honey bees across the country are facing several difficult maladies, which makes providing beekeepers with “the most current information on improving beekeeping skills and knowledge to make the hives more successful” all the more important.
“We continue to experience all of the maladies that every hive faces and we are still working to study and solve Colony Collapse Disorder,” Antunes said. “In a survey of beekeepers throughout the country, beekeepers are reporting losses of 30 to 35 percent of colonies not surviving to spring.”
Varrola mites, which prey on bees in a way similar to a tick, and tracheal mites, a mite so small that it lodges in the throat of the bee, and the “small hive beetle” — all of which have appeared in the United States in the just the past 20 years — are other, more common, maladies that beekeepers must contend with to the keep the hive healthy.
Maintaining the health of honey bees is essential to agriculture in Pennsylvania and throughout the nation. Without honey bees pollinating alfalfa — a key source of dairy cow forage — for example, our milk supply and dairy industry would be at risk. The honey bee is responsible for pollinating $15 billion in agricultural crops each year in the United States. Pennsylvania alone has an agricultural crop value of over $4.5 billion dollars, of which 33 percent relies on the honey bee for pollination.
“One out of every three mouthfuls of food we eat has been pollinated by honey bees. If honey bees were to seriously decline or die out, the impact upon agriculture in the U.S. and the world would be devastating,” Antunes said. “The cost of food would rise and our crops, in terms of quality and quantity, would decline rapidly. Our hope with Bee Fest is to get the right information to greatest number of people who are interested in bees and beekeeping.”
For more information about Bee Fest or to register for the event, visit www.montcobeekeepers.org.
CONTACT: James Duffy, 267-468-8108, duffyj@temple.edu release available by e-mail |
