Yes, I attended and assisted with check in, sold a few of Tom Seeley's books, assisted with a silent auction, etc. There were approximately 300 folks in attendance. Early morning rain cleared in time for sessions of Beehive Basics for newbies wanting to learn how to spot eggs, brood and the queen. After announcements, one of our youth scholarship recipients did a 10 minutes powerpoint presentation on Honey for Heifer. The young man took his first year's honey crop, sold it and donated the money to Honey for Heifer. The charity goes to undeveloped countries and helps those in need to purchase a cow or a bee hive, etc.
Tom Seeley was the key note speaker. His key note topic was The Beehive as a Honey Factory. A nice topic to start the day, for people with all skill levels of beekeeping.
Then the break out groups started. The various topics and speakers were:
Intro to queen rearing and swarm demonstration, Dr. Marion Ellis, University of Nebraska retired.
Moving Bees, Stuart Deitz.
Soapmaking 101, a club member.
Pollinator habitat and endangered medicinals Working together for the bees, Deb McSweeney.
Cooking with Honey and The Buzz on Bees- Youth kind, state honey queen and princess.
Extracting Your Honey, a club member.
Honey Bees in the Wild, Tom Seeley.
Lavender 101, local growers. (This was highly attended)
Lotions, balms and butters, a club member.
Fuel Your Brain First and Honey a Revolutionary Food for Mind and Body, Dr. Ron Fessenden, medical doctor and author from Colorado.
Making Goat's milk soap, a local soapmaker.
Making Nucs, a beekeeper from a nearby club.
Setting Up a Commercial Kitchen, I don't know the speaker's back ground.
Beeswax, a local distributor of beekeeping equipment.
Honey Bee Democracy, Tom Seeley.
Finding and marking Queens, a club member. A hands on experience, in the hive, marking drones. Kids were running around with marked drones like they were pets!
Capturing Swarms with Bait Hives, Tom Seeley.
Fall Inspections, club members.
Gifts of Honey, club member that does farmers markets and craft shows.
Feel the Love, an introduction to pollinators, local author Betsy Betros.
Experiences with the bird that carries the sky on it's back, a beekeeper from a nearby club. (I have no idea what this was about!)
Supering and removing supers from your hives, our club president.
Making creamed Honey, a club member.
A closed session, at the hives, for youth scholarship recipients. A practice session on inspecting a hive with an old timer club member.
Collecting pollen and making bee bread, a club member.
My apologies for all the details, but I thought it might help someone else plan something similar.
For the first time, lunch was supplied by a local boy scout troop. The menu was pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw, tossed salad, chocolate chip cookies.(The boys did the work too!) That was a win-win for everyone. Club members used to provide the lunch which took energy away from the reason for the event. Then we went to box lunches, which was OK. The scouts earned money for their troop and 300 people were fed efficiently. We had a wonderful lunch.
An afternoon snack of homemade honey ice cream was served. Even Tom Seeley made a comment about how refreshing and unusual something like that was at these types of events.
The planning committee did an outstanding job putting this together.
The cost was $40 at the door, $35 if you preregistered by a certain date and $30 if one was an attendee at our Beginning Beekeeping workshop and registered the day of that workshop. $10 of the registration fee went to the scouts for lunch. So, I think attendees received a lot of information at little cost. Compare that to the cost of a new beekeeper losing their hives due to lack of knowledge, or the value of catching 1 swarm.
On a personal note, I took my copy of
Honey Bee Democracy for Tom Seeley to sign. He had brought books to sell and I said I hoped he didn't mind that mine was a couple of years old. Oh, that was the best kind! he said. He looked inside and said I had a first edition. I thought to myself that he had just increased the value by autographing it.
