President s Report-Myrl Stone

Transcription

1 June 2016 President s Report-1&2 Vice President s Report-3/4 Secretary s Report-4 Treasurer s Report-5&6 Nature Notes-7 &8 Classified Ads-9 Send newsletter contributions to: chescobees@gmail.com. Submissions may be edited for length. Ads are *free* for CCBA members. It s true! Nonmembers are welcome to place an ad with us for $5. President s Report-Myrl Stone mjstone@toast.net What are our bees doing? What should we be doing? This is my first, What are our bees doing? and What should we be doing? column topic. To be perfectly honest, I ve dreaded writing such. Please let me explain why. I have three bee yard sites with approximately 20 hives at each site. The sites are roughly in a straight line in relation to each other with on average six miles separating each site. The altitude, orientation, and wind exposure for each site is somewhat similar but certainly not identical. The forage base would show the greatest variation between the sites. This variation is intentional, adhering to the old axiom don t put all of one s eggs in one basket. In spite of the similarity between the yards, some might be quite surprised at the variation in management topics or decisions each group presents. Each yard has a personality and needs. I ve often considered and, in fact, have seen the example, which I will present in the following paragraph. If I were to take one blanket colony management decision and apply it to all yards the result would be as follows: -The decision would be the absolute best for 10% of the colonies. -The decision would be very good for 80% of the colonies. - And finally, the decision would be very poor for 10% of the colonies. Worse yet it could hasten a colony s demise. continued on pg 2

2 2 President s Report continued from page 1 So will dispensing blanket recommendations on individual bee colony management decisions follow the same pattern? Unfortunately, likely it will. Does this apply to general management decisions? Absolutely! Let s take feeding as an example. Feeding may be necessary to prevent starvation, provoke brood rearing, or most often to stimulate wax secretion. However, overfeeding can hand a colony a major setback if done at inappropriate times or unnecessarily. Bees will gorge on freely offered sugar syrup taking it as quickly as possible, filling cells wherever they may be available. Syrup is coming in at a rate far beyond any natural nectar flow. The queen s laying space is quickly shrunk to a minimum or can even disappear. The hive can become loaded with high moisture syrup. Neither situation is ideal. Colony growth can stagnate, or swarming can be encouraged. Nectar comes in at a paced rate each evening the bees will reduce the moisture content of the previous day s intake ask the fellows owning the precision electronic scales about this phenomenon. So to answer the question What are our bees doing? We are entering the major honey flow period They are making honey. What should I be doing? I prefer not to disturb the colonies at this time or to keep disturbances to a minimum. This leads to June s hot topic Often the question of a missing queen or the queenless colony comes up at this time of the year. Yes, June is the month of the missing queen. Any queen breeder will attest, The phones ring off the hooks. Do I go through The colonies looking for queens? No a brood check at most. Remember the colonies are busy making honey, I don t wish to disturb them. Normally I simply lift the cover a content hum from the bees, good to go. A more irritated loader hum, check again in a couple of days. Bees still irritated, check again in a few days. Still irritated and possibly humming louder roaring. The quick fix insert a frame containing eggs, larvae, and capped brood. Where does one obtain this frame? From a second colony or better yet, your support Nuc. Our club (in fact most clubs) has been recommending that all should keep at least one Nuc on hand the resource Nuc. If there is a queen present in our roaring hive there is no harm in adding the frame. If the colony was in fact queenless, they will start a queen cell. If the queen cell is started, and one does not to wish the colony to wait for the new queen to be raised, additional action can be taken. A mated queen can be introduced in the normal fashion. All of this is done with minimum labor, minimum disturbance to the colony, no investment in a needless queen, and maximum honey production. Beginners this is a must know topic, otherwise queen suppliers can be sure of your support. Attend the June 11th meeting This subject will be the focus of my talk, other experts will weigh in, and a Q&A period will follow.

3 Vice President s Report-Walt Talunas wtalunas@gmail.com Swarms. Yes, swarming is still going on. One of my hives swarmed May 31. Luckily, they landed on a nearby bush and were fairly easy to retrieve. For those of you who haven't experienced a swarm (like the people whose house I have the hive at), it can be a little intimidating. Thousands and thousands bees flying in a whirlwind creates an almost deafening roar. The bees are not aggressive at all when doing this, and if you have hives sitting on a non-beekeeper's property, remind them that this is perfectly normal, and that no, the bees are not coming to kill them. :) If you haven't tried catching a swarm yet, definitely do so. It's quite fun to get a call and race over hoping that they are still there. Keep in mind that each call is different, and may turn into something fortuitous and unrelated to bees. Last week, a fellow beekeeper and I got a call for a swarm at a house in West Chester. It turns out that it wasn't a swarm, but that the bees lived in the eaves of the house, and the homeowner will address them at a later time. While the swarm catching was a bust, we did get an abridged private tour of a historic home that was built in the 1780s. What I will do with my Bees this month: Every week I continue with my version of a Demaree where brood is placed in the top box(es) and drawn frames given to the queen in the brood chambers. It's a bit of work shuffling the frames around but it is increasing the honey yield. I'm shocked at how well this is working. My focus has been on honey production, and for those hives that are showing swarming signs, I'm doing something pretty different. I can never spot the queen, so instead of trying to isolate her, I tear the hive apart, place a piece of cardboard to make a ramp from the ground to the entrance, and shake EVERY frame to dump the bees on the ground/ramp in front of the hive (yes, the queen too!). The bees think that they swarmed and march back into the hive. This has worked well except for the one hive that I mentioned earlier (and that was because I wasn't able to get to it for a while and keep on top of it). I haven't begun extracting honey yet, but I am pulling off capped frames and replacing them with either empty frames or frames with foundation. continued pg 4 Women's Circle Meeting Saturday June 18, from 1pm to 3 pm, at the home of Rory O Brien.She is offering a continuous club house for on going ladies meetings, at 423 Dutton Mill Rd. Directions are, go to King Rd in Malvern turn onto Sugartown Rd to Dutton Mill Rd.All are invited to bring treats. Call Diane at

4 4 Vice-President s Report-continued from page 3 What should a Beginner do now? Beginners should be looking through their hives every week. This is invaluable as it is a rare time that you will be able to see how a hive develops, draws frames, and grows. Bees like to move up rather than out, so rearrange the frames so that the you are working the undrawn frames closer towards the middle of the hive. If you're not already on the beginner list, contact Michael Langer. Lots of good hints and tips and much more. We want your first year with the bees to be enjoyable and a success. Your colonies have grown fast and you may even be able to pull a frame or two of honey. If you are able, attend a hive crawl or open hive; it's interesting and helpful to see different methods of doing things. Secretary s Report-Sharon Jardine ccbasharon@gmail.com Our hives have been keeping us very busy over the last few weeks. Keith and I have been adding supers and taking off honey. We dehumidify the frames and then extract. So far we have extracted about 200 lbs of honey! So once again my kitchen space has been taken up with our bottler and all surfaces covered with bottles of honey, good times! The date for the summer picnic is Saturday July 16th from 11am to 3pm. The venue is once again Ridley Creek State Park, Pavilion 3. It is open to CCBA members, their families, and friends who want to learn more about beekeeping. All we ask is that each adult sign up to bring something to share with the group. Please sign up to bring an item at Please send in those entries for our 2016 Photo Contest. Further details can be found on our website. The winner will be announced at the picnic. You could win $100.00, so get those cameras out and start clicking! If anyone would like me to bring a library book please me at ccbasharon@gmail.com - please refer to the spreadsheet in this newsletter mailing for book details and availability. Our next meeting will be on June 11th at the ChesLen Preserve. Please be green and bring your own coffee cup and some food to share, beekeepers also get hungry! Have a great month of beekeeping!

5 June 2016 CCBA Treasurer Report by Jack McMichael Membership Update: As of 5/30/2016, we have 298 active memberships, made up of 13 courtesy/honorary lifetime members, 170 members from 2015 who have renewed for 2016, and 115 new members since the first of this year. In addition, we have another 138 members from 2015 who have not yet renewed for If you happen to be among that group, you are in danger of being dropped from our membership roster as of the end of June, as that is when we will do the annual purge of members who have not kept their membership current. Once that happens, your address will be dropped from the distribution list used to send the monthly CCBA Newsletter and other Association s. Therefore, I urge you to pay your 2016 dues as soon as possible if you have not already done so. Dues can be paid by mail by sending a check payable to the CCBA to my attention at: Jack McMichael, 1118 Cotswold Lane, West Chester, PA 19382, or in person at one of our monthly meetings (the next being Saturday, June 18), or other CCBA sponsored event. If you are unsure if you have paid your dues for 2016, drop an to treasurer@chescobees.org, or see me at the monthly meeting. Please join me in welcoming the following new members as well as any who have returned in the last month after a year or more away from the CCBA: Name Town & State Name Town & State David Hendricks Downingtown, PA Thomas Pate Oxford, PA Tania Mann Downingtown, PA Lauren Lutz Downingtown, PA Guy Bruchstein Springfield, PA Pamela Smyth Coatesville, PA Beth Jenny Coatesville, PA Association Finances: As of 5/30/2016 we have $15,660 in our accounts. In last month s report I indicated that by this month, I would be able to report to you on the final income and expenses from our Annual Conference in March. Unfortunately, as of this writing, there are still a few minor outstanding items, both on the revenue and expense side of the ledger. The net impact of those items should be no more than a couple of hundred dollars. Exclusive of those minor outstanding items, our total income from the Conference was $13,560, and our expenses were $10,945 so our net income from the Conference was $2,615. This compares to a net income from the 2015 Conference of over $8,000. The major factors contributing to this decline were: almost a $4,000 decline in conference registration fees (based on 59 fewer attendees); a 56% (or $1,150) decline in Conference Program advertising revenue, and; a $2,000 (or 35%) increase in venue expenses (room and catering charges). Speaker Requests/Educational Opportunities: As is typical this time of year, we are starting to get more requests from schools and civic groups to provide a speaker to make presentations about either beekeeping, or the importance of honey bees. Most, but not all of those come to us through the speakers@chescobees.org address, and any requests sent to that are forwarded to me. -continued on page 6

6 6 As I pointed out in one of my Treasurer s reports early in the year, educating the public is one of the primary goals of the CCBA, and I set a personal goal of doing at least one educational event per month in 2016, since that is one of the aspects of what we do that I enjoy most. I knew at that time that I may not necessarily have the opportunity to do an educational session about bees and beekeeping every month, but figured that I would also have months in which I could do more than one, so that if I did a total of twelve throughout 2016, that would average out to one per month. Sure enough, the speaker requests we received early in the year were few, and now that the weather has warmed we are getting several per month. I d like to share with you a sample of those that I was recently involved in as well as make you aware of some current requests, and ask for volunteers who may be willing and able to do honor some of these requests. For three consecutive weeks, I had the pleasure of giving bees/beekeeping talks to area students. The first was at a sustainability fair at the Brandywine campus of Penn State University, where I spoke with many students and faculty members about the role of honeybees in our world and their importance in pollination. The following week, CCBA Vice-President Walt Talunas and I made consecutive presentations to two sixth grade classes and one seventh grade class of a science teacher at Devon Preparatory School. You may recall from one of Walt s VP reports that the science students at Devon Prep adopted one hive, and then painted two of the hives at our club apiary, and the school also gave us a $100 donation for the hive adoption. The week after that, I had the challenge of talking about bees to 3 and 4 year-olds as part of the Play School program of the West Chester Friends School. For all three of these events, I took along my observation hive that allowed the participants to view the bees at work on a frame, and try to locate and identify the queen. So within three weeks, I had helped to educate three vastly different age-group audiences about the importance of honey bees. I cannot express how rewarding an experience that was, and I encourage each of you to take part in that educational experience. The CCBA has an observation hive as well as several posters and photographs we can provide you with to make such presentations. At the current time, we have the following open requests for bee speakers. If you are interested in participating in one or more of these, either individually, or if you are willing to go along with someone else to be part of a team presentation, please let me know via as soon as possible. Also, if you are made aware of any other requests for a presentation about bees or beekeeping, please pass it along using the speakers@chescobees.org address. Currently Available bee/beekeeping Presentation Opportunities: Date/Time Location Notes/Details Week of 6/20 Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital Open House dedicated to pollinators Preferably 6/24 to patients and therapists. TBD Chester Springs Library Presentation re the importance of Pollinators and late season pollen to master gardeners and others. 6/24 11:00AM Lanchester Landfill Request from Science Explorers, Inc. program is for young students. Again, if you are interested in participating in any of these events, either singly, or with another CCBA member, please contact me at your earliest convenience so that we can let the requestors know if we can honor their requests. I can also provide more details about each of the above events.

7 Nature Notes Tim Sterrett Although the Sun and Earth will not line up for summer until about June 21, summer has already begun by June 1. Pennsylvania fields are carpeted with young corn and soybeans. The big honey-flow for Chester County s honeybees is just about over: locust and tulip poplar trees are finishing their bloom. For the rest of the summer, the weight of a hive will slowly decrease as the bees produce slightly less honey than they use. A healthy hive can produce 600 pounds of honey in a year. That same colony may use about 550 pounds of honey to feed adults and larvae in the hive. The health and success of a honeybee colony is determined by two factors: the quality of the queen bee (which should lay more than a thousand eggs a day from early spring until the end of summer) and the number of Varroa mites in the colony. Varroa mites arrived from the other side of the world about 1990, live only in honeybee colonies, and feed on the blood of bees and bee larvae. An untreated hive will be killed by mites in three or four years. Yes, someday mite-resistant bees will likely evolve somewhere in the Americas. Beekeepers who maintain hundreds of colonies may be able to watch for colonies that are not killed by mites. The wait could be tens, hundreds, or thousands of years. Backyard beekeepers have to treat their colonies for mites or the colonies will die in a couple of years. Mite treatment should be applied no later than mid-summer to give the colony time to raise the healthy bees that will winter over in the hive. Monarch butterflies will reappear, descended from monarchs that survived the winter in Mexico and laid the eggs that became the monarchs we see in our gardens. In the evening, June bugs may be batting against screen doors, attracted by light inside the house. June bugs are harmless. A pet screech owl once ate seventeen June bugs in one evening. Joining the June bugs at the screen door is a crowd of small gray and brown moths. Most of these insects do not feed as adults. Their winged life stage allows them to find a mate not as closely-related to them as they might if they remained slow-moving caterpillars. Mixing genes leads to diversity. None of us is exactly like either of our parents. Diversity helps insure that some individuals will survive. How many surviving young should a pair of tigers, butterflies, or house wrens produce to keep their population stable? Only two. But the world is a perilous place. Here s what happens in one backyard. "From Chester County in (SE) Pennsylvania, Steve Cottrell wrote in mid-may: On my one acre lot, House Wrens presently have 5 nests with eggs, two with 7 eggs each, and another two boxes have completed nests which may show eggs in the next few days. Since each of the pairs are also likely to produce second clutches, the yard is on track for fledging 80+ House Wrens this season. Since the House Wren boxes with the smaller holes are set on the

8 8 perimeter of the property against tall brush piles which line two sides, House Wrens are not interfering with the Eastern Bluebird and Tree Swallow nests which are positioned in the more open interior area. Thanks, Steve House Wren (Photo by dfaulder via Creative Commons) Groundhogs (woodchucks) spend the summer trying to get fat enough to survive winter, and they pack on the pounds by eating only salad (no dressing.) Clear, dark summer evenings are good for spotting Earth-circling, artificial satellites. Google <heavens-above> for a website that will show the time, direction, and height above the horizon of satellites. The International Space Station is the largest artificial satellite. After dark, Arcturus is overhead. Follow the arc of the Big Dipper s handle to Arcturus. Jupiter is high in the southwest. Orange Mars is in the southeast. Near Mars is cream-colored Saturn. Summer evenings are also a good time to remember what we are made of. A star is a ball of hydrogen gas held together by gravity. Stars fuse hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. While gravity compresses a star, heat from fusion inflates the star. The star releases heat and light. When a star runs out of hydrogen, gravity begins to collapse it. The increased pressure raises the temperature, and the star fuses helium into elements up to, and including, iron. Every atom of iron in our blood was produced in a dying star. Finally, the star may really collapse and explode in a titanic release of heat and light. The final collapse fuses atoms into heavier elements like lead and gold. Every atom in our bodies, except for hydrogen, was created long ago in a star. We are made of stardust.

9 Classified Ads In-season locally adapted survivor queens and nucs for sale at TeslaBeeSupply.com (licensed and certified), or call Chris at for availability. 4 Frame Deep Nucs-$ and Plastic Deep frames, (undrawn & drawn) for sale. 10 for $22 Swarmbustin Honey at swarmbuster@911honey.com , 190 Thouron Road, West Grove, PA 19390