Level 2 – February 28th, 2026, Saturday 8:30 a.m. registration at the Expo Building, Dickinson County Fairgrounds, Spirit Lake, IA.
Level 2 – Saturday, February 28 – Raising healthy & resilient colonies that overwinter and thrive. Skills: Making spring and late season splits; maintaining emergency queen nucs; requeening colonies, managing five frame and double nucs that overwinter; Integrated Pest Management (IPM) principles for controlling Varroa mites; identifying brood diseases, biosecurity practices, using double screen boards for making splits and increasing honey production, mating of virgin queens, and more.
Level 3 – Saturday, March 28 – Advanced techniques for mastering beekeeping. Skills: Small scale raising of local queens: selecting and culling breeder colonies, managing for successful mating of virgin queens, managing five frame and double nucs as “brood factories”, using the Demaree (and modified Demaree) split for swarm control, quality control for selling nucs and queens, IPM and biosecurity advanced practices, and more.
Level 4 – Fall, 2026 – Mentor Training – Coaching the best practices of sustainable beekeeping with novice beekeepers.
February – April 2026, 7:30 pm. Bee Smart Zoom Meeting Schedule:
Use this recurring link for the upcoming Zoom meetings: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88211352391?pwd=5vRoW8vcXSi4BH7XeKDmsrk5w0Vuvx.1
- February 19 -:”Buying good bees that thrive” – Being a wise consumer when buying bee packages, nucs, and queens
- March 19 – “Kickstarting overwintered colonies for spring” – Preparing colonies to thrive in the spring
- April 16 – “Why did my bees die?” – What is learned from diagnosing overwintered colony deaths.
NWIABKA Annual Meeting – Sunday, April 26, 2 pm.
Happy Beekeeping in 2026!! Spring is coming!!
