By Susan Clair

Grant County is fortunate to have several dozens of nonprofit organizations and other groups with missions designed to assist adults and children, provide food and health-related services, protect various species and the environment, and generally make life better for all of us. Last summer, another group entered the mix: Grant County Beekeepers.

Although the name might imply that the group is dedicated to assisting current beekeepers and cultivating new beekeepers, the group actually has a wider reach, as described in its mission statement:

Beekeepers and friends of bees working together to protect honeybees and educate the community on the value of bees and other pollinators, to support the health of our local gardens, farms, green spaces, and natural environment.

The Grant County Beekeepers held its first meeting on July 28, 2017, in my living room, with seven interested people and myself. A few of us met each other for the first time that evening, and none of us knew where we were headed, only that we had an interest in providing a local sustainable environment for honeybees—as beekeepers and friends of bees.

Since that first meeting, we’ve continued to meet monthly, with scheduled guest speakers, at The Commons, also known as the Volunteer Center. The March meeting attracted 24 attendees: some experienced beekeepers, some wanting to learn about beekeeping, some simply wanting to find out how they can help the honeybee population as gardeners and pollinator advocates.

In the group’s first eight months, members of the Grant County Beekeepers have taken their mission statement to heart and applied their efforts in notable projects and local relationships: built a new website, which launched on January 31; held several beekeeping-mentoring sessions in the 2017 “bee season” and, this weekend, the first mentoring session of 2018; gave honeybee presentations for the Rotary Club, local Audubon chapter, students of Aldo Leopold School, and the Silver City and Gila Valley Libraries (with sponsorship from the Upper Gila Watershed Alliance); created a list of pollinator-friendly plants and shrubs that are easy to grow in this microclimate and are among the list of approved plants identified on the Town of Silver City website; formed collaborative relationships with the Southwest New Mexico Audubon Society and the Gila Native Plant Society, to help each other better protect local pollinators; and currently working with the Town of Silver City and Western New Mexico University to reduce the use of harsh chemicals in public spaces and to plant more pollinator-friendly plants and trees.

The Grant County Beekeepers will host a booth at Silver City’s Earth Day event, April 21, in Gough Park. We hope you will visit our booth to learn more about honeybees, their critical role as pollinators in providing the abundance of food we’re accustomed to selecting in our grocery stores, and their importance in the general health and sustainability of the natural environment.

We also extend a warm welcome to anyone interested in attending meetings of the Grant County Beekeepers, held on the second Wednesday of each month, from 6:00–7:30 P.M., at The Commons, 501 E. 13th St., Silver City. Please visit our website: https://www.grantcountynmbeekeepers.org/. For additional information: clair@nmia.com.