A collaborative and thoughtful mission fostered through education, intelligent dialog, and practice that will carry out natural management of honey bees in Michigan and abroad utilizing scientific principles grounded in naturalist theory whilst promoting the chief end of an acaricide-free and sustainable method of beekeeping and honey making.
Our primary objective is to foster and develop regions of beekeepers focused on raising, exchanging, and utilizing local resource. The guild will focus on education, mentoring, and support of hobbyists and sideliners to propagate local sustainable survivor honey bee genetics and improved drone breeding populations that complement chemical-free and survival queen rearing practices.
Although open to beekeepers, hobbyists, sideliners, and the rest, the SBGMI primarily discourages prophylactic use of chemical treatments and defers to physical or mechanical manipulations and interventions first.
Thus, the ultimate end will result in a culture striving to increase local colony resilience to pathogens, diseases, and reduce the risk and occurrence of treatment resistance in Varroa destructor Mites and other honey bee maladies.