2020 will be a Leap into the next Bee School.

The Bee School will be held on February 29, at Decatur Central High School, 5251 Kentucky Avenue, Indianapolis, Indiana 46221.

Here are the directions to the school and hotels.  Folder pickup starts at 7:00 a.m. (EST), with the program starting promptly at 8:30 a.m. and concluding around 5:00 p.m.

If you wish to mail in your registration, click here.

Click here for online registration.

Beginning Class

We limit the number of attendees to the beginning class to 200. Cost is $40 for members and $50 for non-members. There are two rooms upstairs that you will be in all day and you are required to wear a wrist band.

Be sure to register for the Beginning Class if that is what you wish to attend as you cannot switch when you get to the school.

Guest Speaker

Marla Spivak is a MacArthur Fellow and McKnight Distinguished Professor in Entomology at the University of Minnesota. She graduated with a B.A. from Humboldt State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas on the identification and ecology of Africanized and European honey bees in Costa Rica.  She is particularly well known for her work, along with Gary Reuter, in breeding lines of honey bees that detect and quickly remove diseased larvae and pupae, which is called hygienic behavior.

Marla was instrumental in setting up the first bee Tech-Transfer Team in the United States, which continues to help honey bee queen breeders select for disease resistance traits.  More recently, she has begun studying the role of resins, which bees collect and mix with wax to make propolis coatings on the inside of their hives, as an example of honey bee social immunity.   Her lab also studies the effect of the surrounding landscape on the health and nutrition of both honey bees and native bees.  Recent awards include the 2015 Minnesota AgriGrowth Distinguished Service Award, the 2016 Siehl Prize laureate for excellence in agriculture, and the 2016 Wings WorldQuest Women of Discovery Earth Award.

Marla's interest in bees began when she worked for a commercial beekeeper in New Mexico in 1975.