New Pricing Model
We have rolled out a new pricing model for our commercial beekeepers and it is something we are quite proud of. Thanks to the valuable feedback we have received from our beekeepers, we have spent the last 6 months creating a model that makes entry into BIP much more affordable and is flexible. We can now customize our Technical Transfer team’s time to directly match the operational needs of the beekeepers. Since the main cost of our Technical Transfer Teams is to put them on the ground, we now have framed the pricing to reflect a service block of time; ½ day or full day cost. For that ½ day or full day, the beekeepers can utilize the Technical Transfer teams for training crews, conducting hygienic sampling, running trials, sampling, inspecting newly purchased colonies or anything else they may need.
If you know the history of BIP, you know that we started in 2011, providing data to beekeepers to allow them to make informed decisions. Based on the clear, overwhelming and loud response from beekeepers, we are now providing recommendations for our commercial beekeepers and will be adding annotations to inspection and summary reports. These recommendations will be based on what the Tech Teams and we are observing, regional trends and BMPs for each team. We also hope to publish several newsletters this year for our participating beekeepers to inform them of BIP news, new summarized research, case studies, field trials, etc. We are delighted to begin bringing all these added value products to our members.
BIP has always been a resource for the industry as an unbiased third party for conducting experiments or trials on new feed products, new varroa or nosema control products or management techniques. Our analysis skills are also contracted to study product or management usage from our annual loss and management survey for interested segments of the beekeeping industry. This arm of BIP grew rapidly in 2017 and 2018 looks to be a jam-packed year full of interesting trials. This is a win-win for everyone – 1) the company receives high quality data and help in running the tests from expertly trained technical transfer teams, 2) our beekeepers get to be involved on the ground floor of some cutting edge products and science, and 3) we get to share the results of the trials with our beekeepers and the industry.
Gearing up for the Annual Loss and Managment Survey
As soon as there is a whiff of spring in the air in Maryland (sometimes we get a 70-degree day in February), we know that April will soon be upon us. That is the reminder to all of us that we need to get in gear and start planning our Annual Loss and Management survey. This year is no different, but we started a little earlier since we are handing off the survey to a new team member, Dr. Geoff Williams at Auburn University and his grad student Selina Bruckner and we are excited about this too. Having a fresh set of eyes and a couple of new sets of hands has been fun for those of us who have been doing this year in and year out for many years now.
On April 1st, our annual online survey will go live to record losses from beekeepers all over the country independent of operation size. Whether you manage 1 colony or tens of thousands of colonies, this is your opportunity to record what your summer, winter and annual losses were for the past year. If you continue past the loss survey and spend some time to take our management survey, and we hope that you do, you will provide valuable information that allows us to track those practices associated with reduced or increased colony losses. We’ve matured as an organization and instead of static reports, we now offer a dynamic management tool to help you improve your beekeeper practices that is publically available to everyone. You can find it here: https://bip2.beeinformed.org/survey.
If you want to go back and see what losses were in your state from days gone by, check out this link for another interactive way to view losses (as well as how many beekeepers participated and how many colonies they managed): https://bip2.beeinformed.org/loss-map/