Save the Date! WHPA’s Summer Meeting in Redgranite on Saturday, July 8 will feature keynote speaker, Melanie Kirby, owner of Zia Queenbee Co. of northern New Mexico.

Melanie Kirby has been keeping bees professionally since 1997- beginning first as a Beekeeping Extensionist Volunteer for the US Peace Corps stationed in Paraguay, South America. For the next 5 years she worked for two large commercial queen honeybee rearing operations in Hawaii. She worked for a migratory beekeeper in Florida, and met her partner, Mark Spitzig. Together they established Zia Queenbee Company in northern NM which specializes in chemical-free management and survivor stock breeding of queen honeybees. In 2011, Melanie established The Rocky Mountain Survivor Queenbee Cooperative. She served as the 2013 President of the Western Apicultural Society of North America and has organized numerous lectures and field practicums with renowned bee scientists. She manages 300 + full size colonies and 500 mating nucleus colonies for rearing survivor stock queen bees for Zia Queenbees Farm & Field Institute and provides bee and pollination services for area farms and ranches.

Saturday, July 8, 2017
Lions Hall 161 Dearborn Street, Redgranite, WI
Registration Opens at 8:30am
Cost: $20, includes lunch
Program begins 9:00am