What's Buzzin'?

I hope you’re a fan of Jerry Seinfeld, co-writer and co-producer of “Bee Movie,” because Saturday, Aug. 27, is Niwot’s 2nd Annual Honeybee Harvest Festival. Go to downtown Niwot for live music, bee-friendly activities for children, horse-drawn carriage rides, pop-up vendors, mead tasting, bee-loving advocates’ presentations, artwork, and a farmer’s market.

Drop by anytime between 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., and you won’t be disappointed.

This festival this year will honor the memory of Tom Theobald, who spoke at the inaugural festival last summer in spite of his failing health. Theobald was a founding member of the Boulder County Beekeepers’ Association, and produced premium raw honey at the Niwot Honey Farm on N. 83rd Street for almost 50 years, serving as a mentor to many other beekeepers in the area and beyond.

Theobald also made hand-dipped beeswax candles, and wrote a weekly column called “Notes From the Beeyard” in the mid-1980s, first for the newspapers in Lyons and Berthoud, and then for many years for The Fence Post, a weekly agricultural publication.

In addition to serving a term as chief for the Niwot Volunteer Fire Department, Theobald was active in the Niwot Community Association for many years, helping to protect and preserve the agricultural lands surrounding Niwot. In his later years, he actively worked to further public and political awareness of the importance of honeybees and the impact of pesticides on the bee population, a subject in which he became recognized at a national level.

To honor his memory, The Tom Theobald Speaker Series will be presented at the Left Hand Grange this year as part of the Honey Bee Harvest Festival. Presentations will include topics such as how to design a diverse pollinator habitat in your garden, trees for native bees, how to become a beekeeper, mosquito control, using bee fences to help mitigate human-elephant conflict in Tanzania, the evolution of the honey industry, enforcing public policy to protect pollinators, a live demonstration on how to make mead, and “Sister Bee,” a documentary film. Details for the speaker series can be found at http://www.niwot.com.

Other family-fun activities include face painting, Jenn Cleary’s Kid’s Concert, bee antennas and bee bracelets, bee trivia and bee bingo, arts and crafts, make-your-own honey lollipops, beeswax candle rolling, a Bee Kind Instagram Wall, bee books storytime, and a People & Pets Costume Contest.

For the parents, there will be mead tasting, Bees Knees cocktail specials, honey bath bombs, honey bee brunch (La Musette Food Truck), honey hand lotion demonstration, and bee-themed jewelry. A portion of sales will go to a save-the-pollinators charity, and bee-inspired floral arrangements.

BEE KIND donation boxes will be located all over town to support the People & Pollinators Action Network & Butterfly Pavilion (PPAN) and other non-profits supporting pollinators.

The event is sponsored by the Niwot Business Association (NBA) with financial assistance from the Niwot Local Improvement District. Local residents Victoria Keen, Deborah Fowler, and Dawn Server are the champions organizing the Honey Bee Harvest Festival.