The post-modern era of beekeeping was ushered in with the arrival of the tracheal and Varroa mites in 1984 and 1987, respectively. Now, one must be an active beekeeper in order to keep colonies alive and healthy. This necessitates a high level of vigilance and intensive management, both of which place a huge premium on continued education and awareness about proper bee management. One of the most effective means of obtaining such information is to actively participate in beekeeping organizations. But a decreasing number of beekeepers means decreasing membership in many associations.

We decided to address these important issues by conducting a state-wide program to create new hobby beekeepers in North Carolina. The ‘New Beekeeper Cost-sharing Program’ was funded by the Golden LEAF Foundation, an institute whose mission is to 'improve the economic and social conditions of North Carolina’s people'. Our approach was to provide to 250 North Carolina residents who had not previously kept honey bees with a pair of preassembled starter hives (each with a bottom board, one deep brood box, 10 assembled frames with foundation, a hive-top feeder, an inner cover, and a lid) and two three-pound packages of bees with mated queens. Additional equipment was the responsibility of each participant.

We received notification of the award in November 2004 and began coordinating our efforts to advertise the program and solicit applications from potential new beekeepers. Eventually the program was publicized in USA Today, NPR’s All Things Considered, AOL News, and CBS Radio. As a result, we received almost 2,800 applications by the deadline on February 11^th 2005, well over 10 times the number of potential participants in the program.

To select the final participants a committee was formed of apiculture officials from NC State University, the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association (NCSBA), and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Apiary Inspection Program (NCDA&CS). We decided to implement a lottery selection process somewhere in the middle of the two extremes of random choice and geographical distribution where for each county we randomly selected one applicant that had some prior beekeeping instruction (such as attending a bee school) but had not previously kept bees, but the remaining positions were subjected to a straight-up lottery among all eligible applicants. We performed follow-up phone calls to each applicant selected by the lottery process to verify that they would be active participants.

We notified each applicant of his or her final status by the middle of March. We informed them of the logistics of the program and how to acquire their bees and equipment. We also provided them information about how to paint their hives, detailed step-by-step instructions about how to install a package of bees, some trouble-shooting tips for common problems of newly installed packages, and other helpful information. We required each to return a signed agreement for participation. Part of the agreement was for each participant to join and participate in a local beekeeping club, of which the NCSBA has about 50 across the state. This requirement was included for the benefit of the participant, so that they may learn from experienced beekeepers about how to manage their new beehives. We asked each chapter to do as much as they could to help mentor the new beekeepers. This collaboration was designed to support local beekeeping organizations while simultaneously educating the participants about honey bees and beekeeping by attending their monthly meetings. To help the participants link up with a local chapter, we sent each county chapter the names and phone numbers of participants in their area, and we sent each participant the contact information of each county chapter.

We held two beekeeping field days where the participants picked up their hive equipment and packages. The participants were split into two groups by geographic location, one on the eastern half of the state (April 30^th) and one on the western half (May 21^st). The field days were held at Raleigh and Moravian Falls (at Brushy Mountain Bee Farm), which are central locations in each of the two halves of the state. We conducted hands-on demonstrations on how to install a package of bees, and we answered any and all questions about how to get started in beekeeping. There were many, many people who assisted during these field days, and we can’t thank them enough for their help.

Our original plan was to provide each participant with two packages of Russian honey bees with Russian queens (to make it easier for them to control Varroa and tracheal mites). However, our original order for packaged bees fell through in late January, so we had to scramble to locate 500 packages of bees with queens. Fortunately, we were able to locate 500 packages of Italian bees, but we were only able to secure an order for 250 Russian queens. We decided, therefore, to provide each participant with one Italian and one Russian hive. There were two benefits of this initial set back: (1) the participants could compare the two stocks for themselves to see which they prefer, and (2) it enabled us to perform follow-up surveys to determine how well each stock performed over the course of the season.

The New Beekeeper Cost-sharing Program was just one of several new initiatives that was introduced in the North Carolina beekeeping community, thus it is difficult to determine the direct effects of any one. Nevertheless, it appears that the results of the program were quite positive (see also Box 1). In addition to the 250 new beekeepers that participated in the program, many other applicants who were not chosen by the lottery process also became new beekeepers. The result was an increased enrollment in the state association, where the NCSBA went from 1,194 to 1,954 paid-dues members in 2005, an increase of 760 members or 61%. Moreover, many local chapters doubled or even tripled their membership, and the number of would-be beekeepers in short courses went up all across the state.

We also found some interesting trends when we asked each participant to compare their Russian and Italian colonies. We asked each to perform standard ‘sugar shake’ and ‘sticky board’ tests for mite levels (after providing them information about how to conduct them), and we found that the Russian colonies had significantly fewer mites, on average, than the Italian colonies. We will be reporting these results in detail at a later date.

What is clear from our experience is that at least in North Carolina there was a large, untapped pool of people out there who are interested in becoming beekeepers. The impediments for them doing so are that they just don’t know how to get started or they need a little encouragement and support. The simple offering of some free equipment appears to be an effective lure for those who are on the fence to take action. Moreover, it makes for a good story for local media: free bees to address the shortage of beekeepers. Take advantage of such free advertising.

Of course, no program is without its shortcomings, particularly one of this size and scope. In hindsight, there are many things that we could have done better. For example, it would have been more effective to choose new beekeepers by dovetailing the program with beekeeping short courses. Because of timing constraints, we selected the participants semi-randomly and provided them with hives and bees only a few weeks later. Perhaps a better approach would have been to select participants, have them attend beekeeper training, and then provide them equipment. If we ever repeat this type of program in the future, we would likely follow this sequence of events.

We should note that such a program does not need to be on a large scale. Local clubs or chapters of state associations may also take advantage of (disease-free!) donations from current members to offer to new members. All it takes is a little planning, coordination, advertising, and a lot of hard work.

We hope this cost-sharing program will encourage other groups to stimulate their beekeeping organizations at the grass-roots level. Just like a honey bee colony, we are stronger in larger numbers.

There are too many people to thank to fit in these pages. Thus we have opted to provide our sincerest appreciation to all those who helped make this program a success by doing so online at: http://entomology.ncsu.edu/apiculture. We can’t thank everyone enough for their hard work and support of this program – particularly the participants and their mentors, the members of the NCSBA and their local chapters, the NCDA&CS Apiary Inspectors, and the NC Cooperative Extension Service – for it never would have materialized without their efforts.