The North Carolina State Beekeepers Association

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Jessica Mjelde

McGrady introduces House Bill 334 in support of NCSU Field Honey Bee Laboratory

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The replacement of the field laboratory at the NCSU Lake Wheeler research facility has been a major priority for the North Carolina State Beekeepers for several years.

Rep. Chuck McGrady has introduced House Bill 334 which will provide funding for a  new NCSU Field Honey Bee Laboratory.

You may read the text of the bill along with other official information at https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookup/2019/h334.

Dr. David Tarpy has done outstanding work during the past decade as the leading apicultural scientist at NCSU, despite the limitation of inadequate facilities at the field lab.  The uninsulated building is a post WWII residence which does not meet current building code standards.  The roof sags and often leaks. Work space is inefficiently designed and not sufficient for the tasks at hand.

You can help advance this important effort by doing two things.

  • First, call your local General Assembly Representative and Senator to tell them of the urgency of this need and your support.
  • Second, Wednesday, March 20 is Ag Day at the North Carolina General Assembly.  If you can do so, we ask that you come to the General Assembly to participate in this event and meet your Representative and Senator and make the case for this bill face to face.

With annual honey bee losses averaging 40 percent over the past few years –they were 50 percent last year– it is time to address this need.   Vital research is needed to identify solutions to these excessive honey bee losses.   NCSU has a great research program under the leadership of Dr. Tarpy and his staff.  It can be better with a better facility.

We ask for your support.

Paul Newbold, President NCSBA

Pollinator Garden Design Application in the Works

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A new garden design tool being developed at NCSU will be a valuable resource for beekeepers, gardeners and wildlife advocates. With students at NC State, Assistant Professor of Applied Ecology Dr. Elsa Youngsteadt is developing an online tool for designing and visualizing pollinator gardens. 

Images of the app output containing garden diagrams and a visualization of the plant arrangements.

Dr. Youngsteadt’s research and outreach deal with the ecology and health of pollinators in urban environments. She says, “I have noticed that a barrier for homeowners who want to create pollinator habitat is their discomfort with the garden design process, particularly when faced with lists of pollinator-friendly plants that may not be traditional ornamentals.” 

Dr Youngstead
Dr. Youngstead

To overcome this barrier, Youngsteadt is working with NCSU’s computer science students to develop an online garden-design tool, driven by a database of recommended pollinator plants for North Carolina. The app will allow users to design a garden, see how it would look, check for recommended design features, and make adjustments prior to real-world installation.

Beyond its pollinator-friendly plant palette and the ability to show the garden in side view AND layout view, the application will also generate reminders if a planned garden doesn’t meet recommendations such as having variety in flower colors and shapes in each season.

This fall, the software project made the cut for development in the Senior Design Center capstone course at NC State. Youngsteadt says,the basic application will be free. Users will need to create an account.  “To support maintenance costs, we might add premium features in the future, but the core functionality will be available to everyone.” 

To find out more about the design app, visit Dr. Youngsteadt’s website, http://youngsteadtlab.org/index.php/extension/pollinator-garden-planner/. To help with future usability testing of her garden design application or to invite her to talk with your chapter about her urban pollinator research, email Youngsteadt at ekyoungs@ncsu.edu.

Hurricane/Storm Assistance Deadline October 31

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The deadline is fast approaching to file a “Notice Of Loss”. Please refer to the link below to see how to file for assistance.

The USDA has a program for beekeepers that have certain honey bee losses.

Please refer to the Farm Service Agency’s Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees and Farm-Raised Fish Program Fact Sheet for more information. The website is www.fsa.usda.gov/Assets/USDA-FSA-Public/usdafiles/FactSheets/2018/elap_fact_sheet_april2018.pdf

 

Please contact your local Farm Service Agency for assistance.

Tom Seeley, Phil Craft, David Tarpy Presenting at 2018 Summer Meeting

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Excited about the Summer Meeting yet? NCSBA has an intriguing lineup of speakers. Read a bit more about some of amazing apiarists presenting in July.

 

Phil Craft

 

 

Phil Craft served as the Kentucky State Apiarist from 1999 through 2011. Phil continues to communicate with beekeepers through his “Ask Phil” question/answer column which appears in Bee Culture magazine, and through his webpage, Philcrafthivecraft.com. He is also the U.S. technical adviser for Veto-pharma, the maker of Apivar, Varroa Easy Check, and other products. A native of the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, he now lives out in the sticks in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky near Lexington with his family, a very old dog, and some bee hives. 

 

 

Dr. Thomas D. Seeley is the Horace White Professor in Biology at Cornell University. He is based in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, where he teaches courses on animal behavior and does research on the behavior and social life of honey bees.  His scientific work has primarily focused on understanding the phenomenon of swarm intelligence (SI):  the solving of cognitive problems by a group of individuals who pool their knowledge and process it through social interactions.  His work is summarized in three books: Honeybee Ecology (1985), The Wisdom of the Hive (1995), and Honeybee Democracy (2010). 

 

 

David Tarpy

 

David Tarpy is a Professor of Entomology and the Extension Apiculturist at North Carolina State University since 2003. His research interests focus on the biology and behavior of honey bee queens in order to better improve the overall health of queens and their colonies. His work has provided some of the best empirical evidence that multiple mating by queens confers multiple and significant benefits to colonies through increased genetic diversity of their nestmates. More recently, his lab group has focused on the reproductive potential of commercially produced queens, testing their genetic diversity and mating success in an effort to improve queen quality.