Episode #41, Bee Breeding and Cutting Edge Honeybee Research with Melanie Kirby

Today we have the much anticipated episode with Melanie Kirby who you may have seen on instagram TV or in any of the short videos I shared on social media recently. We met at her land up in the mountain village called Truchas, New Mexico where she and her partner have their mother breeder colonies and sells queens bees from their business Zia Queenbees. She is a bee researcher testing out bees in different bioregions, while working on her graduate degree at the famed Washington State University Honeybee Research Laboratory. She talks about the modern business of pollinator bees we depend on to pollinate our food crops. Then we learn about her queen breeding program, nicknamed ‘Bees as Seeds’ with the purpose of breeding more resilient honeybees. She mentions the different subspecies of American bees and much much more. Melanie talks about how she uses a non-intrusive tracking system technology she helped create to document and understand the adaptations of honeybees. She will be taking her work to Spain for 10 months from November 2019 through July 2020 as winner of the Fulbright National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship. You can reach Melanie directly at [email protected], and if you’d like to support the show, share your favorite episodes on social media and please follow me on instagram @getinmygarden.