Commercial beekeeper Bob Binnie, owner of Blue Ridge Honey Company and a well-known YouTube beekeeping personality, will be the guest speaker at the Toe Cane Beekeepers Association meeting on April 26, 2022. The TCBA meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Spruce Pine and is open to the public.

Bob’s talk will cover several ways to use double screen dividing boards, also known as Snelgrove boards, in beekeeping. As the population inside a beehive grows each spring, beekeepers can use one of many different methods to split the hive into two or more beehives. Bob will discuss how he uses the double-screen boards to make splits and manage swarming.

Bob keeps about 2,000 colonies of bees, raises queens, and sells honey, pollen, beeswax products, bee packages and nucleus colonies. Blue Ridge Honey Company is a family-run business located in the mountain town of Lakemont, Ga., with bee yards in Western North Carolina, Northern Georgia and South Georgia. Bob has 40 years of commercial beekeeping experience, is a past president of the Georgia State Beekeepers Association, a past president of the Macon County Beekeepers Club of North Carolina and was voted Georgia State Beekeeper of the Year in 2003. 

The Toe Cane Beekeepers Association serves beekeepers in Mitchell, Avery and Yancey counties in Western North Carolina. For more information, or to join the TCBA, visit https://toecanebeekeepers.net/.

Blue Ridge Honey Company is online at https://www.blueridgehoneycompany.com. Bob’s YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDyga7OtRJSzHzXXXurYCmQ.