My grandfather was a lucky man. He married a wonderful woman who put up with him and he had two healthy children, a girl (my mom) and a boy (my uncle). He must have been born under an auspicious star because when he decided that it was time to leave Russia at the height of World War II, his charmed life kicked in. They escaped but others from their village were not so lucky. It took them 10 long years, moving across Europe, to finally make it to the US and he did what was necessary to keep his family alive (including raising a contraband pig in a refugee camp…). There is no doubt that countless people provided tremendous help along the way and continued to do so for the 96 years of his life. He was a wonderful grandfather to me and my sister…and he was also a beekeeper.
None of us get to where we are without help from family, friends, teachers, or mentors. We all owe a debt of gratitude to at least a few – often many – and our goal should always be to leave the world a better place than when we found it. So now, what does this all have to do with beekeeping?
Today is the first day of our 2018 BIP Fundraiser. The blogs you read here and the data you view and mull over here, don’t come free. It takes our family of lab technicians, technical transfer team members, database experts, commercial beekeepers, backyard and sideliner beekeepers, entomologists, Board members and epidemiologists to bring you the data that you browse and share from our website and reports, and the programs that we offer. We have so many exciting things in store and BIP is at a crossroads to make even more data available, BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP. Please take a moment out of your day to support us. If you have ever used any of our data, be it our Annual Loss and Management survey data, then please DONATE NOW. If you are one of our Sentinel Apiary participants, or a customer who has used our Diagnostic or Emergency Test Kits, and found the data useful and instructive, please DONATE NOW.
If you are a beekeeper in ANY state where we provide, for free, access to your state Varroa, Nosema, pesticide, and even viral data, please DONATE NOW.
We will be coming to you in our blogs over the next month with examples of what BIP brings to the industry and how we strive to inform your work as a beekeeper. Our nonprofit has become one of the most trusted sources of honey bee health data in the world. Help us keep the momentum going, DONATE NOW. If you do, we’ll owe YOU a debt of gratitude.
Thank you from our entire team. We’ll make every dollar count.
