Phil Craft, retired KY apiarist, to speak at June BCBA meeting

Phil Craft, retired Kentucky state apiarist, will speak at the June Blount County Beekeepers Association on varroa biology and control.

Varroa mites infest just about every beehive in America, so you should be at this presentation. Stephanie Tarwater will conduct the session on seasonal management.

The meeting will be Monday, June 10,  6:30 – 8:30 p.m. at the Blount County Library.

Craft was Kentucky state apiarist from 1999 to 2011 and has been keeping bees for much of his life. Both sets of grandparents were beekeepers in Eastern Kentucky. Phil now has a website devoted to the art and science of beekeeping:
http://philcrafthivecraft.com
. Phil’s presentation should be interesting and informative.

If you have questions about what your bees are doing this time of year, the next BCBA meeting would be a great place to get some answers.

As always, our meetings are free and open to the public. Invite a friend to come along with you. Even if the friend isn’t interested in becoming a beekeeper, we always have lively, friendly discussions about what we should be doing with our bees.

BCBA extracting equipment available

The BCBA has extracting equipment the club offers to its members free of charge. We have 2 small extractors, uncapping tubs and bottling kits.

These items were either donated by previous members, and others were purchased from proceeds from our raffle ticket sales at the short course each year.  Equipment can be loaned for up to 4 days by reserving with Stacey Adair at 983-6223. It must be returned cleaned, dry and ready for the next member, or a $50 cleaning fee will be assessed to the member.

Nearly a third of bee colonies were lost during winter

Preliminary survey results from the Bee Informed Partnership (
http://beeinformed.org
) indicate that 31.1% of managed honey bee colonies in the United States were lost during the 2012/2013 winter.

This represents an increase in loss of 9.2 points or 42% over the previous 2011/2012 winter’s total losses that were estimated at 21.9%.

This level of loss is on par with the 6 year average total loss of 30.5%.

Heartland Apicultural Society national meeting set for Cookeville in July

July 11-13, 2013
Tennessee Tech University
Cookeville, TN

Registration form now online!
http://heartlandbees.com
. Pre-registration deadline is June 19.

Plan are coming together for the conference. Click here to download a flyer to share with your fellow beekeepers.

 

Here is just a partial list of scheduled speakers:

Kim Flottum, Jim Tew, Jerry Hayes, Wyatt Mangum, Jennifer Berry, Jeff Harris, Greg Hunt, John Skinner, Phil Craft, Jim Garrison, Tony Prettyman, Juliana Rangel-Posada, Debra Delaney, Zach Huang, John Timmons

Topics already on the schedule include:

• Basic bee biology
• Sustainable beekeeping (several talks)
• Urban beekeeping
• Queen breeding and production
• Non-grafting methods for raising queens
• Setting up a small scale queen and nuc business
• Candle and soap making
• Producing comb honey
• Making and using nucs
• Small scale pollination
• Setting up an online beekeeping business

Seasonal managements notes from Stephanie Tarwater

Everyone needs to be doing hive inspections on their bees.  With all the rain that we are having this will make the bees want to swarm more.  This means opening the box and looking to see if the bees need more room because of overcrowding, or have swarm cells in their brood box.

Overcrowding can be resolved by adding 2 frames of foundation in the center of the brood box.  When adding 2 frames of foundation due to crowding, one will need to put a frame of brood in the middle of the foundation.   The bees are more likely to pull it straight.

If they have a capped queen cell you will need to pull the old queen and make a split.  This is called artificial swarming. With artificial swarming one does not have to chase the bee (swarm) around the trees and it will help to keep the numbers up in the hive for making honey, which is what will all want with the hive.  Do not forget to look about the mite count when you are doing the hive inspections.  If you have questions please call on your county inspectors for the best treatment at this time of the year.

Our speaker this month will help to guide you on identifying the varroa loads in your hives.

Stephanie