KCEEI Living with the Land Lecture Series Presents: Dr. Thomas D. Seeley

KCEEI Living with the Land Lecture Series Presents
Dr. Thomas D. Seeley: Apiary Coffee Hour, Luncheon and Lectures

Keystone College’s Environmental Education Institute’s Living with the Land program consists of a variety of hands-on educational activities for those interested in exploring, protecting, and enjoying our natural world.

Join us for at a coffee hour in the apiary followed by a luncheon featuring two lectures by Dr. Thomas D. Seeley:

-Bait Hives: How to get high-quality bees for free
The basic process of capturing honey bee swarms with bait hives is extremely simple.   You just put up a box of the right design in the right location and at the right time of year.   This talk will explain how to capture swarms using bait hives.  If you need additional colonies of bees, this is an efficient, and fun, way to get excellent, locally-adapted bees.

-Nature-based beekeeping
Nature-based beekeeping is an approach to beekeeping that aims to provide managed honey bee colonies with living conditions that are as close as possible to those of wild honey bee colonies.   The goal is to harmonize our beekeeping methods with the natural history of Apis mellifera, and thus allow the bees to make full use of the toolkit of adaptations that they have evolved over the last 30 million years.  I will review ways in which the living conditions of honey bees differ between wild and managed colonies.  I will also show how we can pursue beekeeping in a way that is centered less on treating a bee colony as a honey factory and more on nurturing the lives of the bees.  The fundamental question is “What can I give to the bees?” rather than “What can I take from the bees?”

Reservations Required
Cost: $25, includes coffee hour, luncheon, and lectures.

Dr. Seeley has authored several books: Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life, published by Princeton University Press (1985), The Wisdom of the Hive: The Social Physiology of Honeybee Colonies (1996), and Honeybee Democracy (2010), Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Beehunting (2016), The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild (2019),Piping Hot Bees (2024).

The Living with the Land program is funded in part by the Wyoming County Room Tax, the Endless Mountains Visitors Bureau, and the Endless Mountains Heritage Region