Meeting the First Monday of Each Month 7 p.m. at Mountain Folk Center (formerly Industrial Park) 65 Folk Center Circle, Murphy, NC 28906

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1 Meeting the First Monday of Each Month 7 p.m. at Mountain Folk Center (formerly Industrial Park) 65 Folk Center Circle, Murphy, NC President s Corner No input received. Minutes of the August 6 meeting Meeting called to order by President Zack Stockbridge. July minutes were read. Correction made in Sales Are Up information. Seller was Bill Rose. Treasurer s Report Given by Fred Bernhardt. As of August 1, there is $ in our account. Around $640 was spent for Appalachian Beekeepers T-Shirts. That money should come back to the treasury as people buy T-Shirts. T-Shirts are In! You can buy a short-sleeved pocketed T-Shirt for $13. Shirts with no pockets are $12. The logo is the same as what is on our hats. The shirts are ecru and look very nice. Bring money to the September meeting and buy some shirts! Protégé Anna Report Anna has two hives. One is much weaker than the other. The strong one is the 8- frame colony. There was much discussion as to why the hives would be so different. Someone suggested that maybe the weaker one should be re-queened. There was also a discussion as to how much honey to harvest and how much to leave for the bees over the winter. It was suggested that a full medium super should be left for each hive for over-winter. Appalachian Beekeepers News Letter Page 1

2 General Discussion About This Year s Harvest Both Larry Stalcup and Dennis Gray said that their sourwood honey was darker this year than last year. There was general agreement that the sourwood bloom was not as good as last year. Honey production seemed down this year from last year. The April freeze hurt the tulip poplars which affected the bees early in the season. People have not seen as much Joe Pye Weed this year, and the goldenrod is already blooming. Larry Stalcup said he has never had a fall honey harvest. He said that mid- September is the time to treat for mites and the time to start feeding the bees. You want to stimulate the queen to lay this time of year. Jeff Mansker and Tom Handford have both done some swarm removals this year from buildings. Jeff said that only about 20% of the bees moved from such swarms survive. Mention was made that Brushy Mountain supplier will sometimes trade equipment or supplies for beeswax. Sugar There was a discussion about finding a wholesale supplier of sugar who could supply sugar in 55-gallon drums (around 550 pounds). Jeff Mansker agreed to be the point of contact for identifying a possible supplier. Contact Jeff if you have any knowledge of a supplier or transporter. Publisher s Note: Glen Henderson has gotten pallets of bagged sugar. We don t have to deal with 55 gallon drums. I think Tom will coordinate with the Mountain Beekeepers Georgia club. Back to School Tom Handford is teaching an Introduction to Beekeeping class at Tri-County Community College. It is on Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30 starting August 16 for eight weeks. Contact Tri-County or Tom if you would like to attend. Tractor Supply Store Animal Day Our club has been invited to have a booth at the annual Animal Day on August 18 at the Tractor Supply Store on West 64. Tom Handford and Larry Stalcup expressed interest in setting up a booth. Tom said he could set up an observation hive. Old Extractor For Sale Tom Handford has an old honey extractor. Contact him if you are interested. Appalachian Beekeepers News Letter Page 2

3 September 4 Webinar NC State University will host a Webinar on Tuesday, September 4 about their latest research initiatives at NC State. If the club is interested, Extension Agent Keith Wood will set up a projector at the Mountain Folk Center so the club can view it together. Contact President Zack Stockbridge if you are interested in viewing the webinar at the Mountain Folk Center. Next Month s Meeting The September meeting will be held at the Mountain Folk Center on Monday September 10 (one week later than usual due to Labor Day Weekend). Bring digital pictures of your bee operations or pictures to Zack. There will be a digital show and tell presentation at the September meeting. Also bring a jar of your honey for judging and tasting. Tom Handford will judge the honey. We will also discuss how to treat hives for mites. See you on September 10! Kay Cameron, Secretary From ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture 40th Edition 1990 Root Publishing Food Exchange Between Adult Worker Bees If one watches honey bees in an observation hive, it will be noted that there is a great deal of antennal and mouthpart contact between them; much of this involves or results in food exchange. Food is exchanged under two circumstances. There is the transfer of newly-collected nectar from a forager to house bee and there is the constant exchange of food among bees in the hive. The latter is very different from the former; it appears to be an important aspect of social living and is not merely the giving of food for the sake of nutrition. Submitted by: Glen Henderson, President of Mountain Beekeepers Appalachian Beekeepers News Letter Page 3

4 While you are finalizing honey processing in the honey house (or garage) you have to do population management in the apiary to avoid swarming. This is the queen you want next year. The fastest thing you can do is put an empty honey super on the hive to give the foragers something to do. My goldenrod is starting to bloom (20 July). This makes excellent fall food (pollen and nectar). The fall asters will bloom soon. Next will be the Joe Pie weed and Ironweed. These are excellent sources of fall honey. I leave this honey in my hives for winter food. Remember, this year the goldenrod is a month early. Be prepared for a dearth in September. If you are marketing medicinal honey, you might want to bottle some of the goldenrod honey as a fall hay fever allergy remedy. No one is allergic to goldenrod. They are allergic to ragweed which blooms at the same time. Most people can t tell the two plants apart. If you do remove some of the fall honey from the hive, you need to make allowances for the loss of winter food. That means prepare to feed syrup while the bees are still very active in August and September. Another game to play with your bees to stop swarming is to draw foundation into comb to be used as replacement frames for those that you are cycling out of the brood chamber and honey supers. You should cycle your comb out of the hive between year 3 and 5. The wax accumulates all the ambient pollution in the air. This can cause damage to the young larvae. Dark wax will cause honey to darken, so you want to keep pretty light colored wax in your supers. To accelerate wax production, I feed my bees sugar syrup because there just isn t enough nectar to draw large quantities of wax. The bees are so regimented that they will use winter stores of honey to make the wax reducing their winter food supply. I think the syrup goes into wax before stored honey. This leaves the best nutritional food (real nectar honey) for the winter food. Something else to consider under swarm management is to make fall splits. Chances are you will have winter die off to some degree. Use the extra bees at the end of July to make new hives to winter over. This way you will not (maybe) have to buy so many packages next spring. I like to pull off my current queen and five frames of mixed food and brood. It is very disturbing for the bees to go queenless. I want the new weaker hive to have the most advantage. After a few days I will introduce a new queen into the old hive. Appalachian Beekeepers News Letter Page 4

5 This is just fall requeening. Make sure there are plenty of worker bees in the new split. They have to pull 5 frames of brood comb and put up food. I feed syrup and brood builder patties since there is a shortage of pollen. If all the stars and planets line up correctly the hive will grow fast because the queen was already up to speed laying eggs. You might get a brood box full and a little in a honey super to winter the bees over. Fall requeening is a good thing to think about. Usually there are queens available in early August. If that queen can get settled in and start laying eggs, she will start out laying more eggs next spring than a new spring queen. You do have the consideration of will the hive over winter? That is a concern whether you have bought a new queen or not. I want my hives to get the best earliest start possible in the spring. Bees can turn back time and reverse brain ageing Reprinted from the Hindustan Times Older honey bees effectively reverse brain aging when they take on nest responsibilities typically handled by much younger bees, scientists at Arizona State University have found. While current research on human age related dementia focuses on potential new drug treatments, researchers said that these findings suggest that social interventions may be used to slow or treat agerelated dementia. In a study, a team of scientists from ASU and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, led by Gro Amdam, an associate professor in ASU s School of Life Sciences, showed that tricking older, foraging bees into doing social tasks inside the nest causes changes in the molecular structure of their brains. We knew from previous research that when bees stay in the nest and take care of larvae the bee babies they remain mentally competent for as long as we observe them, said Amdam. However, after a period of nursing, bees fly out gathering food and begin aging very quickly. After just two weeks, foraging bees have worn wings, hairless bodies, and more importantly, lose brain function basically measured as the ability to learn new things. We wanted to find out if there was plasticity in this aging pattern so we asked the question, What would happen if we asked the foraging bees to take care of larval babies again? he noted. Appalachian Beekeepers News Letter Page 5

6 During experiments, scientists removed all of the younger nurse bees from the nest leaving only the queen and babies. When the older, foraging bees returned to the nest, activity diminished for several days. Then, some of the old bees returned to searching for food, while others cared for the nest and larvae. Researchers discovered that after 10 days, about 50 percent of the older bees caring for the nest and larvae had significantly improved their ability to learn new things. Amdam s international team not only saw a recovery in the bees ability to learn, they discovered a change in proteins in the bees brains. When comparing the brains of the bees that improved relative to those that did not, two proteins noticeably changed. They found Prx6, a protein also found in humans that can help protect against dementia including diseases such as Alzheimer s and they discovered a second and documented chaperone protein that protects other proteins from being damaged when brain or other tissues are exposed to cell-level stress. In general, researchers are interested in creating a drug that could help people maintain brain function, yet they may be facing up to 30 years of basic research and trials. Maybe social interventions changing how you deal with your surroundings is something we can do today to help our brains stay younger, said Amdam. Since the proteins being researched in people are the same proteins bees have, these proteins may be able to spontaneously respond to specific social experiences, he added. But Amdam noted that further studies are needed on mammals such as rats in order to investigate whether the same molecular changes that the bees experience might be socially inducible in people. The study was published in the scientific journal Experimental Gerontology. Appalachian Beekeepers News Letter Page 6

7 Let s try to support member-owned businesses whenever possible. Andrews Veterinary Hospital David Ackerman 828/ Main St., Andrews, NC Candy Mountain Farm The Juhlins 828/ Candy Mountain Heights, Murphy, NC Officers President: Zack Stockbridge Secretary: Kay Cameron Vice President: Larry Stalcup Treasurer: Joyce Bernhardt If you have an interest in bees/beekeeping, we hope you will join us and enjoy meeting and talking with others who share your interest. Membership Application For Appalachian Beekeepers Date: Individual/Family-$12 Name Address City, State, Zip Phone. Cell How did your hear about our Club? Appalachian Beekeepers News Letter Page 7

8 Mail to: Joyce Bernhardt, 325 Rolling Oaks Rd., Murphy, NC RECEIPT Date Amount $ Received from For Membership dues prorated from date above to following April 1. Signed Appalachian Beekeepers News Letter Page 8