A Gathering of Beekeepers and a Gathering of Kids and Bees

Bee ready!

This is the week of the 40th annual Western Apicultural Society's conference, set Sept. 5-8 at the University of California, Davis. The non-profit group, founded at UC Davis to meet the educational needs of small-scale beekeepers primarily throughout the western United States, will meet in the Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) on campus.

It's a conference filled with educational topics, networking, field trips, a silent auction, door prizes and just plain "bee" fun, says honey bee guru and Western Apicultural Society (WAS) co-founder Eric Mussen, Extension apiculturist emeritus, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, who is serving his sixth term as president.

He's been bee-sy. Ditto the delivery services to the third floor of Briggs Hall. Tomorrow the packages will be trucked over to the ARC, and the anticipation continues.

The newest addition to the conference schedule is the "Kids and Bees" program, set from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Tuesday, Sept. 5 in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, located on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis campus. The haven is the department's half-acre educational bee garden. "Bee Girl" Sarah Red-Laird of Ashland, Ore., program director of the American Beekeeping Federation's "Kids and Bees" Program and executive director of Bee Girl will be "borrowing" the site  as part of a grant from the American Beekeeping Federation's Foundation for the Preservation of Honey Bees. First-graders from Peregrine School, Davis, have signed up for the interactive educational program involving bees and beekeeping, honey, beeswax and bee habitat.

Said Sarah: “They will watch bees dance, listen to them buzz, taste honey, smell flowers, roll beeswax candles, observe pollination, take flower seeds home to plant, and learn about the important connections between themselves, bees and our food. The students are keenly interested in learning more about bees, in keeping with the school's motto of “SOAR” - Science, Outdoor Education, Arts, and Responsibility.

Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology, and staff research associates Bernardo Niño and Charley Nye of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., Honey Bee Research Facility/UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology will staff four of the work stations. 

As for the Bee Girl organization, Sarah describes it as a "nonprofit with a mission to inspire and empower communities to conserve bees, their flowers, and our food system." She serves as the Oregon director of the Western Apicultural Society, a member of the New York Bee Sanctuary Advisory Board, and the regional representative to the Southern Oregon Beekeepers' Association. She is also a "Mountainsmith Brand Ambeesador." (As of Monday afternoon, she was seeking several more volunteers. Those interested can contact her sarah@beegirl.org or 541-708-1127.) See her work on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (@sarahBeeGirl). Her hashtag is #loveyourbees.

Sarah says her love of bees began in Southern Oregon, on the deck of her aunt's cabin, at the end of a country road. She received her degree, with honors, in resource conservation from the University of Montana and did research in Jerry Bromenshenk Honey Bee Lab. She presented her beekeeping findings at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research on "How to Keep 100,000 Girlfriends, the Careful Relationship of a Beekeeper and Her Honey Bees." Following her graduation, Sarah returned home in late 2010 and found her niche, combining her love of bees with her education, outreach, research, conservation to form Bee Girl. She formed the non-profit experience to "encourage and support beekeepers and bee lovers." 

Sarah describes her Bee Girl organization as a "nonprofit with a mission to inspire and empower communities to conserve bees, their flowers, and our food system." She serves as the Oregon director of the Western Apicultural Society, a member of the New York Bee Sanctuary Advisory Board, and the regional representative to the Southern Oregon Beekeepers' Association. She is also a "Mountainsmith Brand Ambeesador." (As of Monday afternoon, she was seeking several more adult volunteers to help out at the stations. Those interested can contact her sarah@beegirl.org or 541-708-1127.) You can see her work--and her passion--on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (@sarahBeeGirl). She's known by the hashtag, #loveyourbees.

And she does. The logo adorns her bee suit.

Topics at the WAS meeting? They range from Africanized honey bees to top bar hives to how to keep your bees healthy. See schedule. Eric Mussen, who offers 10 reasons why one should attend the conference (see Bug Squad blog), may be reached at ecmussen@ucdavis.edu for further information.