Jennifer Berry
Special TVBC Guest for National Honey Bee Day, 2016
August 20, 2016
Jennifer Berry Web Page - Click HERE
PDF Compilation of Jennifer Berry Articles (Big file, please be patient) - Click HERE
Jennifer Berry Individual Articles & Columns on the Web - Click HERE
Jennifer Berry is a sweet southern belle, research professional, and lab manager for the University of Georgia Honey Bee Program. I am tickled to death to announce that she is fixin to come to our stompin grounds, Boise, ID, for our National Honey Bee Day this August! As a University of Georgia alumna myself, I can say it’s gonna be nothing but moonlight and magnolias. I reckon you wanna come to all these festivities, so stay tuned for updates!
First, let me tell you about this sweet slice of pecan pie - Jennifer Berry is sharper than a tack, she has been there at the University of Georgia for 17 years! She also has become an authoritative source on beekeeping from Charleston to Baton Rouge, across the country, and internationally. From hosting beginner’s workshops, to helping coordinate the Georgia Master Beekeeper Program, to speaking at local, national and international beekeeping gigs, she is known as a knowledgeable and engaging educator and serves as an exceptional resource for the apiculture community.
Bless her heart, she is also involved in educating women in developing countries on beekeeping in order for them to become self-supporting. And, for the first time in Georgia history, she was instrumental in creating a program to teach and certify inmates in apiculture within the Georgia prison system. This program was designed to help secure potential jobs, upon an inmate’s release, in order to help reduce recidivism. If that isn’t sweeter than a glass of sweet ice tea, then I don’t know what is.
She’s as busy as a cat on a hot tin roof - When she’s not teaching or at the lab, she can be found working with the hundreds of bee colonies she has established between the Okefenokee Swamp and the north Georgia mountains as part of a collaborative project with Emory University. And on nights and weekends, she is caring for her own hundreds of bee colonies that are part of her business, Honey Pond Farm, where she sells queens, nucs and teaches queen rearing classes.
While her current collaboration with Emory is one the largest projects she has worked on, her prior research includes testing the effects of old comb on honey bee health, integrated pest management methods to control mites and small hive beetles, and the sublethal effects of miticides on bees.
Well, butter my butt and call be a biscuit, I am just so excited for National Honey Bee Day, I can barely handle myself.
I recently read an article Ms. Jennifer wrote called A Spring Primer - all the management tricks you need to get from winter to honey flow - She says “Successful overwintering is the result of proper fall and winter management. But that is neither here or there now. What we need to do is concentrate on the problems at hand” - One of those being well fed bees. Winter isn’t quite over just yet so make sure your bees have enough food to survive to the real starting point of spring. Feed light hives with candy boards while it is still cold and switch on over to sugar syrup as the weather warms. The next thing that will be here before we know it is swarm season. So y’all better assess your hives as the weather warms - do you have a weak hive? Requeen it or combine it with another to bolster it. If you have some strong hives, create a nuc, which often comes in handy later on in the season. Varroa mites continue to put our knickers in a knot if we don’t manage them. So, if you didn’t take advantage of a winter OA treatment, consider an early spring Varroa treatment.
So mark your calendars, ladies and gents, for National Honey Bee Day! Aug 18-21. Bring your bourbon, sweet tea, and southern smiles. It’s gonna be hog wild, y’all!
First, let me tell you about this sweet slice of pecan pie - Jennifer Berry is sharper than a tack, she has been there at the University of Georgia for 17 years! She also has become an authoritative source on beekeeping from Charleston to Baton Rouge, across the country, and internationally. From hosting beginner’s workshops, to helping coordinate the Georgia Master Beekeeper Program, to speaking at local, national and international beekeeping gigs, she is known as a knowledgeable and engaging educator and serves as an exceptional resource for the apiculture community.
Bless her heart, she is also involved in educating women in developing countries on beekeeping in order for them to become self-supporting. And, for the first time in Georgia history, she was instrumental in creating a program to teach and certify inmates in apiculture within the Georgia prison system. This program was designed to help secure potential jobs, upon an inmate’s release, in order to help reduce recidivism. If that isn’t sweeter than a glass of sweet ice tea, then I don’t know what is.
She’s as busy as a cat on a hot tin roof - When she’s not teaching or at the lab, she can be found working with the hundreds of bee colonies she has established between the Okefenokee Swamp and the north Georgia mountains as part of a collaborative project with Emory University. And on nights and weekends, she is caring for her own hundreds of bee colonies that are part of her business, Honey Pond Farm, where she sells queens, nucs and teaches queen rearing classes.
While her current collaboration with Emory is one the largest projects she has worked on, her prior research includes testing the effects of old comb on honey bee health, integrated pest management methods to control mites and small hive beetles, and the sublethal effects of miticides on bees.
Well, butter my butt and call be a biscuit, I am just so excited for National Honey Bee Day, I can barely handle myself.
I recently read an article Ms. Jennifer wrote called A Spring Primer - all the management tricks you need to get from winter to honey flow - She says “Successful overwintering is the result of proper fall and winter management. But that is neither here or there now. What we need to do is concentrate on the problems at hand” - One of those being well fed bees. Winter isn’t quite over just yet so make sure your bees have enough food to survive to the real starting point of spring. Feed light hives with candy boards while it is still cold and switch on over to sugar syrup as the weather warms. The next thing that will be here before we know it is swarm season. So y’all better assess your hives as the weather warms - do you have a weak hive? Requeen it or combine it with another to bolster it. If you have some strong hives, create a nuc, which often comes in handy later on in the season. Varroa mites continue to put our knickers in a knot if we don’t manage them. So, if you didn’t take advantage of a winter OA treatment, consider an early spring Varroa treatment.
So mark your calendars, ladies and gents, for National Honey Bee Day! Aug 18-21. Bring your bourbon, sweet tea, and southern smiles. It’s gonna be hog wild, y’all!