The coordinator of the March bee conference in Cheyenne has a few buzzwords about the multi-day event.
“Get your bee on at the Wyoming Bee College conference, open to the world, three days of all things bees and beekeeping,” noted Catherine Wissner, University of Wyoming Extension horticulture educator in Laramie County.
More than 28 workshops and three keynote speakers are featured at Laramie County Community College Friday-Sunday, March 22-24, with three pre-conference workshops Friday.
Registration is $125 for the pre-conference workshops, $85 for the bee college or $195 for both. Children ages 7-15 are free with a paying adult. Cost includes lunches, snacks and beverages and Saturday dinner. For more information, including a complete agenda and workshop descriptions or to register, visit http://www.wyomingbeecollege.org.
The pre-conference workshops Friday allows a choice of three all-day sessions: “MN bee squad,” “Raising queen bees,” and “Apitherapy.”
Hilary Kearney of San Diego, Calif., begins the conference Saturday with “How to add 30,000 bees and have close neighbors who may have a hard time wrapping their head around your new hobby. Positive relations.” She is author of “Queen Spotting,” Beekeeping like-A-Girl blog and creator of Girl Next Door Honey, a beekeeping business that provides educational opportunities to new beekeepers.
Saturday has five track sessions, including the option of an all-day session, “I think, I want to become a beekeeper,” and four other tracks “Learning curves,” “Staying alive,” “Money and more” and “For the bees, build a better world.”
The Saturday evening keynote speaker is Tammy Horn Potter, author of “Bees in America: How the Honey Bee shaped a Nation” and “Beeconomy: What Women and Bees teach us about Local Trade and Global Markets in 2012.”
There are eight sessions from which to choose Sunday and build upon what is learned Saturday, including: hive inspections, finding and installing packages of bees, honey extraction, beekeeping in schools, bee for pollination service, swarms and more, said Wissner.
Timothy Baker, head teacher at Charlton Manor Primary School in Greenwich, England, who introduced a bee curriculum and a successful afterschool program, will address conference attendees.
Following Sunday lunch is a panel discussion with Albert Chubak, Joe Carson and Michael Jordan to provide insight from beekeeping around the world.
Instructors for the conference are beekeepers with many years of experience, researchers from the USDA and/or from universities, said Wissner.
