The Island Grown Bees program educates our community with an emphasis on beekeepers, about the importance of bee pollination and the role that beekeepers play in responsible beekeeping. Our goal is to promote both natural pollinator habitats along with honeybee beekeeping to achieve a balanced approach to insect pollination on Martha’s Vineyard.

IGB will be offering Bee School 102 on March 24th/25th, 2012 and workshops throughout the year on topics essential for responsible beekeeping. We help beginning beekeepers find a mentor for their first year to work and learn from and get comfortable going into a hive. We also help with hive set up and answering questions through our IGB facebook page. Because we are concerned about causing an imbalance between honeybees and native pollinators we can only support mentoring for 100 hives. IGB maintains a registry of hives and owners and accepts applications to join the mentoring group capping at 100 hives. The annual Bee School is offered to anyone wanting to acquire beekeeping knowledge regardless of whether or not there is room in the mentoring program.

New for 2012 will be our native pollinator habitat program. Landowners may be interested in participating in this program in lieu of keeping honeybees. We will provide informational workshops for landowners who are interested in growing wildflowers that promote native pollinator habitat. We are researching grant fund sources that may be able to provide assistance with land tillage and seeds. Keep your eye on this website for more information about this exciting program as it develops.
For more information on the Island Grown Bees program, to rent our honey extractor, sign up for Bee School, participate in the native pollinator habitat program, or to secure the use of a honey bee observation hive for an educational event, please contact:

Randi Baird, randi@islandgrown.org