About the MBA
The Monadnock Beekeepers Association is a beekeeping club for both beginning and experienced beekeepers in the Monadnock and Connecticut River Valley regions. We meet on the first Thursday of each month at Stonewall Farm in Keene, NH. Please feel free to come to a meeting or contact us if you have an interest in beekeeping.
Monadnock Beekeeper's Sustaniable Apiary Project
The Monadnock Beekeepers' association is working toward sustainable beekeeping. By "sustainable" we mean eliminating our dependency on the importation of southern nuc’s, packages, and queens by promoting the local survivor genetics through nuc distribution. To be sustainable we need to use local resource management techniques to raise spring and summer nucs from our survivor colonies and our own queen production. A nucleus hive is a miniature colony with all the components of a full-size colony, including a laying queen, workers, brood at all stages of development, pollen, and honey. The benefits of a nuc are that the bees are working together to establish their colony. The queen is mated, accepted, and laying. The nucleus colony gives you about a four week head start toward getting your hive prepared for winter.
2020 NH Winter Hive Loss Survey
The NH Beekeepers Association (NHBA) is collecting data on NH honeybee hive loss for the winter of 2018/2019.
The survey is available online at the link below until 4/30. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NH2020HiveSurvey
The short survey is open to all beekeepers in the state – you do not need to be part of NHBA to participate. The results will be published on the NHBA website in June. We will be giving away a 1 year membership to the NHBA to one lucky survey participant. In addition, the NH Bee club who has the largest percentage of membership participation will win $50 toward refreshments at a future meeting. - MONADNOCK WON TWO YEARS AGO!
We also have 2 other citizen science projects this year – Deadout CSI to collect observations on the winter deadouts & Mite Testing to collect monthly information on mite loads. More details can be found at www.NH-HoneyBee-Health.com
New Citizen Science Project: "What Is Blooming?"
In order to better understand the honeybee nutrition and food availablity in New Hampshire, this project is seeking citizen-based data collection and ground truth to improve understanding of the forage available to bees at different points in the season. The "NH Is Blooming" site allows beekeepers to report on the plants and trees flowering in their area and see what others have reported. They can also report the color pollen they observe coming into there hives.
SARES Grant – Nosema Ceranea Research
A collection of 30 bees, from just outside the brood area, should be in alcohol or frozen for each hive you would like tested. Mail to: Jodi Turner, 283 Matthews Road, Swanzey, NH 03446 or drop off labeled with name and contact information.
