Buckshot Survival Hour

A special Guest. Tim Schuler, a Senior Animal Health Technician for the Department’s Division of Animal Health, has been named the new State Apiarist, and began that job on August 20. He takes over the position vacated last spring by the retirement of then-State Apiarist Paul Raybold. “I want to help build up not only the commercial beekeepers, but also the hobbyists, the people who have 50, 60, 70 colonies,” Schuler said. “They can take the pollination jobs that sometimes may be too small for the larger beekeepers to do.” Schuler said he also planned to continue working closely with Rutgers University and the New Jersey Beekeepers Association to expand the highly successful “Bee-ginners Beekeeping” course offered since last year. Those hobbyists, who could also become a key link in the honeybee supply, remind Schuler of his own background and introduction to the industry when he was growing up in Prospect Park, Pa., just outside Philadelphia. “My dad was a beekeeper, and I learned the business by the school of hard knocks,” he said. ”When I got out of college, I wanted to do beekeeping. It’s something I love.”