"The Mind of a Bee"
Lars Chittka, Ph.D.
Chittka has carried out extensive work on the interactions of bumblebees and honeybees with flowers, and has been involved in projects linking the science of bees with music and art.
2024 Virtual Winter Conference
Saturday, February 10, 2024
Join us for a fun filled day with excellent speakers and great topics. The conference is open to all paid members of NMBKA. Renew your membership using button below to receive a Zoom invite.
Past Conferences
2023 Summer Conference
August 19, 2023
2023 Summer Conference
Saturday, August 19, 2023
8:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Bee Workshop @ Albuquerque Open Space Visitors Center
6500 Coors Blvd NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico
8:30 PM - 11:00 AM
"The Munchie Truck" Food Truck
Albuquerque Open Space Visitors Center
11AM - 12PM
Conference and Vendor Exhibits
South Broadway Cultural Center
1025 Broadway Blvd SE, Albuquerque, New Mexico
NMBKA Event Release
Because the attendees will be working with live bees in an apiary environment, please bring your personal protection equipment. Also an event release is required to protect you and NMBKA. Please review the NMBKA Sponsored Event Release and electronically sign on the registration form below. The release may be reviewed by clicking the button below.
2023 Winter Conference
February 4, 2023
Join us for a fun filled day with excellent speakers and great topics. The conference is open to all paid members of NMBKA. Renew your membership or join us. Use the following buttons.
"Seasonal Efficacy of Current Varroa Treatments"
Cameron Jack, Ph.D.
Jack’s goal is a program that prepares students for the challenges of beekeeping, providing practical solutions to beekeepers seeking to improve honey bee health.
"Using Fungi to Aid Bee Health"
Nick Naeger, Ph.D.
Naeger aims to find innovative ways to help bees fight diseases, studying the interactions between honey
bee nutrition, diseases, and the bee immune system.
"Hive Necropsies--What Dead Collonies Can Tell Us"
Judy Wu-Smart, Ph.D.
Wu-Smart leads the pollinator health program at U of Nebraska-Lincoln, looking at the underlying stressors in bee health and bees’ interactions with environmental toxicants.
"Nutritional Ecology of Honey Bees in a Changing Landscape"
Juliana Rangel, Ph.D.
Rangel focuses on honey bee nutrition, factors that affect the reproductive quality of honey bee queens and drones, and the genetics of unmanaged honey bees.
"Planting for Pollinators"
Kaitlin Haase
Haase is the Xerces Society’s Southwest Pollinator Conservation Specialist, working to create climate-resilient, connected pollinator habitat in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
2022 Summer Conference
Secrets of Successful Beekeeping in Challenging Environments
It’s really hard to imagine a better theme for these times. Jose Villa and John Gagne are back with us to speak and lead the discussion. The 2022 meeting this summer is being held Saturday, Aug. 27 in-person at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe. The day will feature a panel of beekeepers from different parts of the state revealing their “secrets” of successful beekeeping. The Institute will have hives on its campus, so we will devote part of the day in the field for demos of mite washes, queen marking, or comb reading.
Be sure to become a member if you aren’t already. Your membership includes admission to conferences, newsletters, access to past recorded conference talks, and more. Look for more information on the conference as plans unfold in the next weeks on social media FaceBook and Instagram. Another online auction is also in the works.
2022 Winter Conference
Our 2022 Winter Conference Speakers
Click on photo of speaker to view presentation
Quentin Geant, branch manager of Beeopic California, works with his father Nicolas Geant to care for the nearly 180,000 bees on top of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral. Since 2013, Beeopic France has been taking care of three hives on the sacristy’s roof. The bees survived the devastating fire of April 2019. His firm rents bees, including those on the roof of the Notre Dame’s stone vestry. His father is the beekeeper there.
Dr. Jonathan Lundgren is an agroecologist, Director of the Ecdysis Foundation, and CEO for Blue Dasher Farm. He received his PhD in Entomology from the University of Illinois in 2004, and was a top scientist with USDA-ARS for 11 years. Lundgren’s research and education programs focus on assessing the ecological risk of pest management strategies and developing long-term solutions for regenerative food systems. Lundgren received the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering by the White House. Lundgren has served as an advisor for national grant panels and regulatory agencies on pesticide and GM crop risk assessments. Lundgren has written 107 peer-reviewed journal articles, authored the book “Relationships of Natural Enemies and Non-prey Foods”, and has received more than $3.4 million in grants.
Megan Mahoney has been fascinated by honey bees ever since fortuitously making acquaintance with them in Dr. Marla Spivak’s lab in 2003. Her enthusiasm for bees, beekeepers, and bee breeding has grown over time, and inspired her to build up a repertoire of beekeeping experiences and skills across the US. She has invested more than a decade of work inside the commercial bee industry, with past experience working for queen producers in northern California, leading a tech team for the Bee Informed Partnership in Texas, and working as a technician for the varroa sensitive hygiene (VSH) breeding program on Hawaii, Big Island. In 2019, she and her partner (Ross Klett), founded “MAHONEY BEES & QUEENS,” a company specializing in instrumental insemination, breeder queens, and cell production. They currently manage a migratory Carniolan-based breeding population in addition to helping maintain about 2,000 colonies. They travel (with the bees) between Southeast Texas and Central North Dakota. However, Megan still considers Albuquerque “Home.”
Julia Mahood is a Georgia Master Beekeeper who has been keeping bees since 2004. She created the citizen science website MapMyDca.com to gather data on drone congregation areas. Julia was awarded the Georgia Beekeeper of the year in 2018. A graphic artist, she designed the Georgia “Save the Honey Bee” license plate. She is passionate about education and teaches beekeeping in Georgia prisons and is active in her local and state bee organizations. This presentation “Beekeeping Tips and Tricks”
Julia Mahood is a Georgia Master Beekeeper who has been keeping bees since 2004. She created the citizen science website MapMyDca.com to gather data on drone congregation areas. Julia was awarded the Georgia Beekeeper of the year in 2018. A graphic artist, she designed the Georgia “Save the Honey Bee” license plate. She is passionate about education and teaches beekeeping in Georgia prisons and is active in her local and state bee organizations. This presentation, “Droning On about Drones”
Dr. Samuel Ramsey, founder and director of the Ramsey Research Foundation, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Entomology from Cornell University in 2011, and focused his research on Predatory & Parasitic Insect Behavior. He cultivated an interest and expertise in the close relationships between insects and other creatures (symbioses), and dedicated his doctoral research to understanding a parasite killing honey bees globally ( Varroa destructor). He completed his formal education in Dr. Dennis van Engelsdorp’s Honey Bee lab at the University of Maryland, College Park. As he closely examines the biology of honey bees, their associated parasites, and related threats, he considers how discoveries can best be made available to everyone. Dr. Sammy strives to understand the behavior and biologies of these threats in isolation while developing preventative and emergency measures to preserve honey bee species at home and abroad.
Dr. Marla Spivak is a MacArthur Fellow and McKnight Distinguished Professor in Entomology at the University of Minnesota. make propolis social immunity. She is particularly well known for her work breeding lines of honey bees that detect and quickly remove diseased larvae and pupae, which is called hygienic behavior. She was instrumental in setting up the first bee Tech-Transfer Team in the United States, which continues to help honey bee queen breeders select for disease resistance traits. More recently, she has begun studying the role of resins, which bees collect and mix with wax to coatings on the inside of their hives, as an example of honey bee Her lab also studies the effect of the surrounding landscape on the health and nutrition of both honey bees and native bees.
2021 Summer Conference August 7, 2021
Click on photo of speaker to view presentation
Randy Oliver has kept bees for most of his life, and views beekeeping through the eyes of a biologist, researcher, and nature lover. He makes his living as a commercial beekeeper, and maintains the website ScientificBeekeeping.com. Randy is a popular writer in the bee journals and an invited speaker worldwide, sharing his knowledge of bee biology, colony health issues, and practical beekeeping management.
Presentations: Concepts in Varroa Management
Wes Brittenham as a lifelong gardener has designed and cared for a wide variety of landscapes and gardens. As the Farm and Landscape Manager at Los Poblanos Historic Inn & Organic Farm, he oversees 25 acres of lush gardens, vegetables, herbs, native grass and wildflower meadows, and three acres of lavender. Wes has worked with beekeepers and bees for over a decade and keeps hives on the farm, both top bar and the AZ Slovenian hives. His passion for pollinators influences the gardens in his care.
Presentation: Delights of Earthly Gardens
Jennifer Han is a post-doctoral researcher at Washington State University in Pullman. A former landscape architect, she left that profession to pursue her scientific interests. She earned her PhD in plant biology studying genetics to improve plant breeding. She is currently researching the efficacy of Metarhizium, a fungus that kills arthropods, as a biocontrol agent against varroa mites. She hopes to develop fungal strains with minimal negative impacts to honey bees.
Presentation: Is Varroa Control Possible Without Chemical Miticides?
Julia Mahood is a Georgia Master Beekeeper who has been keeping bees since 2004. She created the citizen science website MapMyDca.com to gather data on Drone Congregation Areas. Julia was awarded the Georgia Beekeeper of the year in 2018. A graphic artist, she designed the Georgia “Save the Honey Bee” license plate. She is passionate about education and teaches beekeeping in Georgia prisons and is active in her local and state bee organizations.
Presentation: The Games of Drones
Randy Oliver has kept bees for most of his life, and views beekeeping through the eyes of a biologist, researcher, and nature lover. He makes his living as a commercial beekeeper, and maintains the website ScientificBeekeeping.com. Randy is a popular writer in the bee journals and an invited speaker worldwide, sharing his knowledge of bee biology, colony health issues, and practical beekeeping management.
Presentations: Reading the Combs
Tina Sebestyen keeps bees in top bar, Langstroth, and long Langstroth hives. She is the founder of the Four Corners Beekeepers Association and past vice-president of the Colorado State Beekeepers Association. She is currently working to produce the Master Beekeeper Program for the state of Colorado. She writes for the American Bee Journal and Bee Culture magazines from her farm in SW Colorado, and speaks about bees everywhere she gets the chance.
Presentation: Fat Bees: The Winter Survivors
2021 Winter Conference
February 6, 2021
Click on photo of speaker to view presentation
Session One – Introduction & Randy Oliver
Managing Varroa: Understanding Mite Population Dynamics, Best Timings for Treatment, and Progress on Selective Breeding for Varroa Resistance
Session Two – Robyn Underwood & Margarita M Lopez-Uribe
Panelists – Kate Whelan, John Gagne and Craig Noorlander
Beekeeping Philosophy and the Range of Options of Management Practices
Session Three – Keith Delapane
What Bees in Nature Can Teach Us
Session Four – Ramesh Sagili
Honey Bee Nutrition: What We Know and Need to Know
Session Five – Keith Delaplane
Mutiny and Other Things That Can Go Wrong (Besides Mites)
Session Six – Randy Oliver
2020 Hot-Weather Trial of Varroa Treatments and Update on Extended-Release Oxalic Acid
2020 Winter Conference
Click on images for a larger view Top row, left to right -Hilary Kearney (Girl Next Door), Megan Mahoney, Steve Baca
Second row, left to right- Vendor area
2019 Winter Conference
Click on images for a larger view Top row, left to right -Michael Bush, Mark Sommer, Sue Sebestyan, Judy Phillips
Second row, left to right- Wes Brittenham, Sue George, Vendor area
Third & fourth row – Vendors area
"The Mind of a Bee"
Lars Chittka, Ph.D.
Chittka has carried out extensive work on the interactions of bumblebees and honeybees with flowers, and has been involved in projects linking the science of bees with music and art.
