Our Speaker for our May 2016 Speaker Series Program is William Klopfenstein, respected educator from Edwardsville. Bill grew up on a small dairy farm in southeastern Pennsylvania where his family grew and preserved most of their own food. After high school, he studied biochemistry at Penn State, where he eventually earned a Ph.D. He taught at Kansas State for many years before taking a position as chairman of chemistry at Western Illinois University. He has been a gardener for most of his life and still can freeze or dry considerable quantities of food which he has grown. He has kept bees for about ten years. His presentation will cover:  Importance of pollinators. Where do honey bees come from?  What goes on in a bee hive? The honey bee-pollination industry.  How to get started in bee keeping.  Trends in honey bee colony numbers. Contributions to those number trends by: Parasites, Diseases, and Pesticides. He plans to bring a frame with bees dependent a bit on the weather, and he also plans to bring some honey which he will have recently collected.    

The program will take place on May 9 from 7:30-9 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church, 110 E. Third Street in Alton. Attendees and friends are welcome to join the speaker and others for pre-meeting dinner at The Old Bakery Brewing Company, 400 Landmarks Blvd in Alton starting at 5:30 p.m.