UW Extension offers honey bee seminar on April 16 in Cody

CODY, Wyo. - Honey bee biology, honey production and crop pollination are subjects of a presentation on Wednesday, April 16, in Cody, Wyo.

The program begins at 7 p.m. in the EOC room in the basement of the Park County Courthouse.

Joe Stewart, former Department of Entomology instructor in beekeeping at Rutgers University, will give the presentation, said Sandy Frost, UW CES educator for Big Horn, Fremont, Hot Springs, Park and Washakie counties.

Stewart said there has been much publicity about the critical need for honey bees to pollinate crops.

“A lot of people have talked to me about it, even though they did not have a professional interest in honey bees,” said Stewart.

After Stewart completed his bachelor’s degree at Westminster College in Pennsylvania, he worked as a laboratory technician in Cornell University’s beekeeping lab, where he collected the world’s first sample of dried bee venom. Stewart has a master’s degree in entomology from The Ohio State University.

Stewart and his wife, Bonnie, have lived in Cody for 20 years. Stewart teaches students in Cody and Powell, Wyo., about honey bees. For 10 years, he has talked about bees with the second grade classes at Westside Elementary School in Powell. He will be teaching Cody sixth graders about bees at National History Days at Northwest College’s A.L. Mickelson Field Station on Dead Indian Pass 30 miles northwest of Cody in mid-May.

For more information, contact Frost at 307-754-8836 or sfrost1@uwyo.edu.