Darwinian Beekeeping with Dr. Thomas Seeley | Houston Beekeepers Association January 2021 Meeting

The Houston Beekeepers Association is proud to present Dr. Thomas D. Seeley!

Darwinian beekeeping is an evolutionary approach to beekeeping, one that seeks to provide managed honey bee colonies with living conditions that are as close as possible to those of wild honey bee colonies. The goal is to harmonize our beekeeping methods with the natural history of Apis mellifera, and thus allow the bees to make full use of the toolkit of adaptations that they have evolved over the
last 30 million years. Dr. Seeley will review ways in which the living conditions of honey bees differ between wild and managed colonies. He will also show how we can pursue beekeeping in a way that is centered less on treating a bee colony as a honey factory and more on nurturing the lives of the bees.

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Thomas D. Seeley, biologist and writer, is a retired professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University. Before retiring, he taught courses on animal behavior and did research on the behavior, social life, and ecology of honey bees. He continues his bee research on a small scale and he continues to be a beekeeper. He started keeping bees while a high school student, when he shook a swarm into a box and brought it home. He earned his AB in chemistry from Dartmouth College in 1974 and his PhD in biology from Harvard University in 1978. His scientific work is summarized in five books: Honeybee Ecology (1985), The Wisdom of the Hive (1995), Honeybee Democracy (2010), Following the Wild Bees (2016), and The Lives of Bees (2019). Dr. Seeley has received numerous awards for his work.

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The Houston Beekeepers Association has virtual meetings open to the public on the third Tuesday of every month (except for December). Find details for our next meeting on our
website: http://houstonbeekeepers.org/
or
facebook group:   / houstonbeekeepers