BEELINE. Newsletter of the Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association (SABA)

Transcription

1 BEELINE May 2015 Volume 29 Issue 3 Newsletter of the Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association (SABA) Officers of the Board: President: Chris Cripps, chris@betterbee.com, st Vice President: Ian Munger, Beekeeper@bluelinehoney.com 2nd Vice President: Gregory Stoddard, gs@gregorystoddard.com Treasurer: Trish Manning, Secretary : Trisha Driscoll, Promotions Officer: Farial English, Webmaster : Bruce Raver, ADKbees@gmail.com Beeline Editor : Anne Frey, editor@adirondackbees.org The County Coordinators: Albany - Stephen Wilson, Fulton - Dan Kerwood, Montgomery Bruce Blender, Rensselaer - Tony Antonucci, Saratoga - Christopher O Connor, chrisoc@icloud.com Schenectady - Walt Wojtowicz, wwojtowicz43@gmail.com Schoharie - Leo Siemion Jr., Warren - Alicia Purzycki, aandbfarmer@gmail Washington - Tom Wells, thom12162@yahoo.com President s Column In school, a professor asked my class if we had ever taken piano lessons, and if we liked to practice. Most of the class answered no, and he then asked us why? The answers were mostly that we just didn t like to. As he developed this idea more, the real reason he came to was that we were not very good at playing the piano. He pointed out that we tended to do things we were good at, and we tended to like doing what we could do well. Beekeeping is like that. Sure, the little bugs are fascinating, but then winter comes with all of its associated problems. How did your bees do over the winter? If you are sitting there thinking they did awesome, then I say congratulations. I bet that you will still be keeping bees in the future. If you are sitting there thinking Oh, yeah I should see if anyone has bees for sale since mine died, then my gut feeling is you are more at risk of becoming a beekeeper that tried, did not like it, and therefore, did not stay with it. To help your bees make it through next winter, start now by thinking about Varroa Mites and a plan for their control. These little bugs that live on our little bugs are fascinating as well, - by Chris Cripps but they are deadly to the bees. They spread disease through their bites. With enough mites in a hive, an epidemic of viruses affects the bees causing a lot of varying signs. There are lots of controls that people practice to keep mites under control. The general tenets of mite control are to keep track of the mite numbers, and if they are getting high, do something to lower their numbers. Some control can be done with management like making splits or otherwise breaking the brood cycle (where the mites reproduce), and some is done with treatments that range from organic approved chemicals to deadly, waxcontaminating chemicals. Since we are at the start of a beekeeping New Year, please make a resolution to keep track of the tiny bugs living on your bees. You are a mite keeper besides a beekeeper. Hopefully if you keep these mites under control, you will have bees that survive the winter and will be taking part in an enjoyable and fascinating hobby that you do well, and will enjoy.

2 Calendar - Use This to Mark Yours! Beeyard Visits Scheduled! May 18 : Membership meeting at cooperative extension, 50 West High St., Ballston Spa. 7pm Ask a Beek informal Q &A, lending library, dues renewal, 50/50 raffle ticket sales 7:30 pm Speaker Presentation Don t forget to mark your calendars for the upcoming beeyard visits! This is a great opportunity to visit other apiaries and collaborate with your fellow beekeepers. June 13th and 14th: Beeyard Visits. See next column for more information. So far we have 3 beeyard visits scheduled for June. The first beeyard visit of the season is being hosted by Walt Wojtowicz in Delanson. Participants will be helping with a hive inspection. This visit is scheduled for June 13th from 11:00 2:-00. June 27: Betterbee Field Day at Washington County Fairgrounds See betterbee.com July 20th: Membership meeting at cooperative extension, 50 West High St., Ballston Spa. 7pm Ask a Beek informal Q &A, lending library, dues renewal, 50/50 raffle ticket sales 7:30 pm Speaker Presentation The second visit on the calendar is scheduled for June 14th, from 11:00-2:00, and is being hosted by Beth Ann Shane-Holser in Averill Park, NY. It will include hive inspections of 2 Langstroth hives, 1 KTBH, and possibly a new Warre hive. A potluck will be held after the June 14th apiary visit please bring a chair and something to share. July 21-26: Saratoga County Fair in Ballston Spa. See page 5. August 24-30: Washington County Fair. Notes from Gregory Stoddard, 1st V.P. Our third beeyard visit is the Betterbee Field Day scheduled for June 27th. Please join us at the May 18th SABA meeting! 7:00 7:30 pm * Attendance Sign-In * Ask A Beekeeper Advice Corner * Lending Library, Refreshments * Dues Renewal & Volunteer sign-up sheets For more information on locations and contact information, please visit our SABA webpage ( If you are interested in hosting a bee yard visit, Amy Carmen at smallbluehouse@gmail.com 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM Short business meeting, followed by our May program, Cut Outs for Fun and Profit. Ian Munger will be discussing how to get free bees, and get paid for doing it! Mr. Munger is SABA 1st Vice President, co-founder of SABA s bee school, and one of its instructors. NOTE: The Meet & Greet will be at Augie's Restaurant, 17 Low St., Ballston Spa., on May 18th at A fun lunch after the bee yard work. Bring something to share when you come to a SABA bee yard visit! VOLUME 29, ISSUE 3 2

3 Honey Bee Corner Bee Stings at Picnic Time by Dick Johnson Summer months are traditional times for picnics. Among the uninvited picnic guests it s likely you ll see some yellow jackets. Unlike gentle honey bees that are vegetarians, the aggressive yellow jacket is omnivorous and eats some insects. That is why they show up just at the time the delicious aromas of hot dogs and hamburgers float in the breeze from the grill. They also have a sweet tooth and go after the sugar in your iced tea and soda pop. Remind the kids to check the edge for bees, especially if the drink has been left on the table for a while. There are two types of yellow jackets in this area that build up their populations during late summer and early fall. The native, most common type makes its nest in the ground and is actually smaller than a honey bee. The other type is about one inch long, almost double the size of a honey bee, and native to Europe. It builds a small hanging nest. Both of these insects are shiny, bright yellow with black stripes differing from the honey bee which is tan/ rust with black stripes, and fuzzy. The other serious pest at the picnic may be the white faced hornet. This is a large, shiny black bee with white markings on the head and white markings near the tail. These are the ones that build those big round gray nests hanging from a branch. Yellow jackets and white faced hornets may be aggressive and can sting multiple times, unlike the honey bee. It is unlikely that honey bees will create a problem unless the picnic is in a beekeeper s yard. Honey bees don t want to sting as they lose their life if they do, but they will sting to protect their hive. Unless you threaten them, while honey bees are foraging in the flowers, they are usually very gentle. Despite the hysteria associated with bee stings, they do not cause a medical crisis for 99% of our population. The honey bee has a barbed stinger that sticks to you and continues to inject venom under your skin for a couple of minutes. It s best not to leave it there, but to get the stinger out as soon as possible to prevent getting the full dose. Fortunately many people develop a tolerance to stings, and their reaction is much reduced after frequent stings. Most people do not experience any symptoms other than a burning sensation for two minutes, a red spot, and local swelling. Occasionally a mild allergic reaction may cause itching, a rash, or a light-headed feeling, and these symptoms usually respond to an antihistamine pill. The dangerous type of reaction is a drop in blood pressure and any difficulty breathing. This may be an anaphylactic reaction and requires immediate medical attention. People who are hypersensitive to insect venom should carry the pocket sting kit available by prescription. Treatments to desensitize highly sensitive people are available from specialized allergists. When a person receives multiple stings there will be significant swelling, but a healthy adult usually recovers after even 300 stings. There has been considerable concern about the spread of the Africanized honey bees now found in much of the deep south. These honey bees are very aggressive but beekeepers in those areas have adjusted their management to be able to deal with them, continuing to pollinate crops and produce honey. These bees originated in the tropics and will not persist in the north since they cannot survive our cold winters. Don t expect any problems with the gentle honey bee, but be careful with those picnic bees! The Catskill Mountain Beekeepers meet the second Tuesday of every month at the Agroforestry Resource Center, home of the Greene County Cornell Cooperative Extension, 6055 NYS Route 23, Acra, NY at 7:00 p.m. We have very enthusiastic and informative members who love to share their beekeeping adventures. You are always welcome. Stop in and say hello. What is that pollen my bees are bringing in? One of the best parts of spring is watching honeybees starting to bring pollen back to the hive. Often, you might find yourself wondering what color pollen is coming from which plants. Jack Rath recently shared a great resource: Pollen_source. This website has a really nice pollen color chart that is easy to use. Bee sure to check it out! 3

4 EAS Ontario, Canada August If the hot, humid days of summer are getting you down, plan on heading north for this years EAS conference at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. There will be over 100 workshop sessions to choose from, as well as fun events such as a pig roast, auction, and annual banquet. Workshop sessions include queen rearing, integrated pest management, introductory beekeeping, mead and beer making, how to win at honey competitions, and more. Speakers will include Mark Winston, Robert E. Page Jr., Phil Craft, Robert Currie, Ernesto Guzman, Pierre Giovenazzo,Tammy Horn, Zachary Huang, Greg Hunt, Doug McRory, Heather Mattila, Medhat Nasr, Gard Otis, Steve Pernal, Nigel Raine and many, many more. For more information you can visit the EAS website at: conferences/eas-2015.html Please note: If you are attending the conference, please plan ahead - you will need a passport to return to the U.S.! Seminar Very Educational Thank you to SABA s 20 seminar volunteers, who made the annual seminar on March 21 a success. Led by Anne Frey, volunteers did such things as host the speakers and drive them around, set up the atrium, bring refreshments, staff the check-in table, solicit donations for the fundraiser from vendors, pack goody packets, sell raffle tickets, and sell T-shirts. Thank you to John Brownigg for the following pictures of our conference! Participants visiting vendors and exchanging ideas. We had excellent speakers again this year, including Megan Milbrath, Allen Dick, and Wyatt Mangum. The pre-seminar dinner at Carney s in Ballston Lake was especially fun this year. Allen Dick and Meghan Milbrath were present, along with 17 others. This was a great chance to chat and get to know the speakers a little. The day included a very successful raffle, and there was much excitement while the tickets were being pulled for prizes. Thank you to everyone who donated items for the raffle! Eagerly waiting for the next speaker. Again, thank you to the volunteers: John Brownrigg, Mike Coppolla, Brian Cuttler, John Daly, Trisha Driscoll, Farial & Richard English, Anne Frey, Jack Grimshaw, Mark Klein, Trish Manning, Aaron Morris, Susan Roberts, Lori Rubaszek, BethAnn Shane-Holser, Bob Sheedy, Tom Slavin, Austin and Maureen Subcleff, Marsha Williams, Vicki Wills, Stephen Wilson and David Wood. 4 Enjoying lunch!

5 Got Honey? The Saratoga County Fair is approaching! SABA sells honey, comb honey, and creamed honey at our educational booth at the fair. We are looking to SABA members to market a variety of honey products this year at our booth. To sell your honey, honey should be presented in new, clean containers, which are labeled with the beekeeper s name and address, and the weight. For members who work a shift at the booth, SABA takes a 15% commission on sales. To sell without volunteering, a 25% commission is taken. Please contact David Wood and let him know what you would like to sell ( address: woodmarr@nycap.rr.com). Don t forget that SABA will also be at the Washington County Fair, August 24-30! Stay tuned for more details! Volunteers Needed for the Saratoga County Fair Let s face it: beekeeping is a fascinating adventure. One great way to share the fun and wonder of beekeeping is to volunteer at the Saratoga County Fair SABA booth. During fair week (July 21-26) volunteers are needed to staff our club s booth for a four hour shift (10 AM 2 PM, 2 PM 6 PM, 6 PM 10 PM). There will be 2 workers per shift. In return for volunteering you get: 1) free fair admission, $10 value, 2) a raffle entry for one of 4 Betterbee thank you gift certificates, 3) the fun of talking with folks about beekeeping, and 4) satisfaction in knowing you helped the club. Booth volunteers will sell honey, give out I found the queen! stickers, hand out free honey candy, and keep an eye on the observation beehive. No experience needed! A sign up sheet will be available at our May meeting, and you can also David Wood at woodmarr@nycap.rr.com. Photo by Anne Frey Observation Beehives Observation beehives always bring in the crowds to the Saratoga and Washington County fairs. Can you help? Do you have an observation beehive you could lend for fair use? Even if it was for a day or two it would be a big help! If an empty observation hive is available, could you loan some frames of brood and a queen? If you can help or have some ideas, let s talk! David Wood

6 Q and A: Nucs or packages, and how to use and store honey from deadouts. Hi Anne, One of my hives died so I was wondering about a nuc or package which option is recommended? I understand that nucs build out faster, but I was wondering if there are other advantages such as; are they healthier, do they tend to survive the winter better, do they produce more honey, etc.? One person said that since I have honey and built out foundation he recommended saving the money, getting the package, and then possibly upgrading the queen later in the year. (I'm not sure I have the skills to do that). Another beekeeper recommended a nuc. If you do recommend a package, I'm wondering if it's better to get the package with an Italian Queen or one with the Carniolan queen. Another question is, I plan to feed the remaining honey to my bees but if there is more left over will it last thru the summer/fall/winter or should I try to extract it? If I do store it, is in the basement OK? Should it be in a plastic bag or other container? Thanks Trisha Honeybee Haiku The bee emerging from deep within the peony departs reluctantly. (from Narrow Road to the Interior, by Matsuo Basho) Hi Trisha, Nucs and packages equalize over the summer to about the same strength. If you are at all concerned about possible disease in combs being bought with your nuc, go with a package, if they are available. They are also cheaper. Finally, you have drawn comb, which will make a package grow even faster than a package on plain foundation. Carniolan queens are my favorite. But any new queen should be a good layer. It s important to see that she is released, and watch her progress, to know how good she is. Carniolans are reputed to be better winter survivors. Honey from deadouts, or any winter stored honey, will not extract. It s crystallized in the cells. Use it for bees. They take it out of cells very well with their little tongues, and make it into liquid honey again, and redeposit it above brood, feed it to brood, or eat it. If you have supers on, and a lot of old honey, they may fill up the supers fast with it as they open up an area for the queen to lay eggs in. Don t store any beekeeping equipment in a plastic bag, since then you will get mold. It s best to store it on little blocks, with a metal queen excluder under the bottom box, and another metal QE at the top. Then no mice get in, but air can circulate. This should all be in a place that bees can t get to, or sometime you may have a robbing frenzy at the stack. Anne Submitted by Anne Frey VOLUME 29, ISSUE 3 6

7 In Thoreau s Woods, Timing is Everything by Art Jahnke (reprinted with permission from the Summer 2014 issue of Bostonia) Thank you to Amy Carman for sending this article! No, a blueberry is not just a blueberry. Not when it s attached to a blueberry bush, whose tender new leaves each spring provide food for insects, which pollinate flowers and themselves often become food for birds, which litter the forest with seeds, and yes, sometimes become food for bigger birds, which...you get the picture. A blueberry is one representative of a complex ecosystem, one that can be thrown out of balance when a single element, like the timing of spring leaf-out, begins to fluctuate. That, according to Richard Primack, a College of Arts & Sciences biology professor, is exactly what is happening in the woods of Concord, Mass. Primack and graduate students Caroline Polgar (GRS 13) and Amanda Gallinat (GRS 17) have been tracking the changing leafout times of trees and shrubs at Walden Pond, starting with dates first noted by Henry David Thoreau in the 1850s. The team has determined that the contemporary leaf-out dates are on average 18 days earlier than they were when Thoreau made his observations. At Bostonia s request, Primack s team pushed their data one step further to predict leaf-out times for one particularly sensitive species, the low-bush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium), through the end of the 65st century. The lowbush blueberry s projected leaf-out Rising Temperatures Re-set Some Natural Clocks date at the end of this century will be April 7, about 20 days earlier than this year s. While researchers cannot predict the specific impacts of the blueberry s earlier leaf-out on other plants and animals, they can say there will be consequences. That s because some of the plants and animals whose life cycles have been interwoven for centuries do not respond to warming temperatures in the same way that others do, essentially throwing the ecosystem out of whack. The Primack team found that on average, insects and plants are responding to warming temperatures As plants leaf out earlier, the natural food web may lose its balance. similarly (ticks, for example are emerging earlier to feed on white-footed mice and suburban hikers), and they are staying in sync with each other. Songbirds are not. Many migratory birds, such as the pine warbler and the gray catbird, have been found to have a much weaker response to local temperature changes, instead taking their behavioral cues from the climate in other parts of the country or world, where they winter. This, says Gallinat, could spell trouble for songbirds if they miss the abundance of insects that accompanies the peak of spring leaf-out. Warmer springs also mean earlier flowering times. Gallinat warns that if species like the lowbush blueberry flower early in response to warmer temperatures, but the insects that help pollinate them don t have the same response, the reproductive capacity of the blueberry could suffer. And so could populations of its pollinators, including honey bees, bumble bees and other insects. Flowers arrive early, but some songbirds do not. Earlier leafing out also means a longer photosynthetic growing season, which could change the balance of power among species by giving an advantage to trees and shrubs with strong responses to temperature changes. Primack believes that apple trees and birch trees may thrive, while sugar maple and beech trees may languish. Invasive shrubs, such as nonnative barberries and honeysuckle, are likely to be the big winners. 7 VOLUME 29, ISSUE 3

8 Volume 29, Issue 3, May 2015 Treasurer Trish Manning 442 Van Patten Rd. Duanesburg, NY Services/For Sale For Sale: Summer Five Frame Nucs. From my overwintered bees, with new 2015 queens. All brood in nuc will be from the queen with the nuc. Ideal for use to invigorate weak hives, replace dead hives, or to over winter for 2015/2016. $130 each. Lloyd Spear or Reminders Beeline Deadline for the July issue is June 22. Please submit your articles, photos, announcements, etc. to the Editor via Photos should be reduced in size before sending. For Sale : SABA T-Shirts, $14 each. Proceeds from sales go to SABA s Wolf-Lounsbury Young Beekeeper Award fund. Choice of green or sapphire. Buy shirts at SABA meetings! Online Payment of dues, T-shirt purchases, etc. is possible on the SABA website for your convenience.