Below is a survey request I received from the Bee Informed Partnership and it's open to all beekeepers. The embedded link should be active, or you can copy and paste it in your browser. The more of us that respond, the better their data.
BIP launches first Social Science Survey - please participateView this email in your browser Hi there! As beekeepers, we all love to talk about bees and why we love what we do. Most surveys focus on the bees themselves, but for this one, we are interested in YOU! BIP is working with social scientists at the University of Minnesota to understand more about who beekeepers are, beekeeping organizations, what motivates your beekeeping, your perspectives on beekeeping policies, where you go for information about beekeeping, and what most concerns you in beekeeping today. There are a couple personal questions but don’t worry, your responses are anonymous and will be kept completely confidential! Although we don’t ask about your favorite color or your favorite meal (Red and cheeseburgers, right?), your participation will help us understand beekeepers and help the beekeeping community, BIP, and others develop strategies to promote and realize the benefits of beekeeping and best management practices. Within six months of completing the survey, we’ll send you a link to a BIP blog post with summary insights about the results and what it might mean for the future of beekeeping. Right now you are probably really eager to complete this survey so here’s what you do. Follow the link below and start answering questions! The survey should only take 10-15 minutes. We’ll only keep this survey open until July 13th, so don’t miss out - get started now! https://umn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bQRKXM8z9e5wo85 Thanks for all your help. We are all in this together and we are excited about this branch of our research! PS – If you have any questions or concerns about the survey, please contact Christopher Thoms at the University of Minnesota,[email protected], 612.624.0702.
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The Rushford Meadery and Winery turned out to be a great place to meet. Fred brought a delicious bread along with cheese spreads that went really well together, and Shane and Laurel provided coffee, cheese, crackers and samples of their meads and wines to everyone interested in sampling. Very nice.
We also held a meeting and everyone got to see the extractor and club bees. This being our first year with the extractor we're going to learn as we go, and Pam will coordinate all extraction activities with Shane (FDA Rule: Shane cannot produce his product and have honey extraction going on simultaneously (so coordination is a must)). We're thinking that group extractions are probably the way to go so that cleanup can be a shared activity, but that might not work out for everyone. Anyone that wants, or needs, to extract individually will be responsible for cleanup afterward. Shane, being very generous, is only looking to us to cover the costs of electricity and hot water, and he feels $10.00 per extraction party is sufficient. (And he doesn't even want that if some of his product is purchased.) Pam will be setting up a calendar that will be on the blog showing extraction dates as they are requested and available. To set a date, contact Pam at: [email protected] Three days prior to the meeting, I put sticky boards in the club hives to see what the mite drop would be. (This was 1 week after the FormicPro treatments had ended.) After 72 hours, the sticky boards had a lot of very small mites, which were the baby mites that were under the cappings at the time of treatment. As the bees emerge from the cells, the cells are cleaned and the dead mites drop through the screened bottom boards. Because it takes 3 weeks to go through a brood cycle, we will not be able to get an accurate count of living mites in the colonies until about the second week in July. The FormicPro apparently did its job! (I have attached the current information on mite treatment levels.) We inspected both hives and replaced (5) frames with wax foundation frames (deeps) donated by Fred. The hives are improved because of this, but there are still several plastic frames in the hives that I will try to get around to replacing on my next inspection. Both colonies are queenright and have about a medium population for this time of year, and they will hopefully increase the broodnest area with the new frames. The hives were placed where Shane originally wanted them, but they are in shade all day. Pretty sweet when it's 90+ degrees under a blazing sun, but not the best location for the other 51 weeks of the year. Fred asked Shane if they could be moved to the southeast corner of the woods, and Shane is fine with that. Fred, Pam and I will come with a plan to relocate them. Denise brought our legal Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Liability Law sign to the meeting, and Shane already has it up. It is now to government specifications, which is boringly black and white, and D must have had to look the other way while printing it. Sorry D, the forest green was awesome! It was mentioned at the meeting that Fumagilin-B is no longer being manufactured, and all suppliers I checked with are out of the product. Fumagilin-B has long been used to combat Nosema, primarily Nosema apis. The only scientifically proven product on the market that I'm aware of to combat Nosema is Hive Alive, and that was developed primarily to combat Nosema cerenae, which is much more prevalent than Nosema apis. (Some researchers go so far as to claim that every honey bee colony in the world has it!) I had been in contact with the manufacturers of Hive Alive, Advance Scientific, and they are restocking US distributors with fresh supplies (2 year shelf life, unopened). Brushy Mountain Bee Farm and Mann Lake are distributors, but there may be others. We talked a bit about a relatively recent discovery of honey bees gathering substances from mushrooms, and Mary mentioned that she has a hard copy of some of the information that she will make copies of and bring to our July 21 meeting. We will also discuss how we want to present the ECWBA at future Events, with the Green Lake County Fair being the next scheduled Event. Laurie is our Events Coordinator, and it's part of her responsibility to ensure that booths are set up according to both Event holders and ECWBA member expectations. Up until Walleye Weekend we had a strictly educational presence. There was a club decision made to offer tee shirts, hats, etc., with the ECWBA logo as a means to raise funds. But there were also bee jewelry, key chains, honey stix, and other non-ECWBA articles for sale in the Walleye Weekend booth. This was a surprise to most as it had not been discussed with the membership prior to the Event. The membership must now discuss, and come to an agreement by majority vote, as to whether to continue with non-ECWBA items or not. I'm hoping that we have more member participation at the Green Lake County Fair. It would be nice to have 3 - 5 members present at all times, instead of just 1 and sometimes 2. I believe one of the Walleye Weekend time slots had no coverage. The dates are listed below, so check your calendars and make your plans early. July 7 is Field Day at D's apiary, N7928 County Road WH, Fond du Lac, WI, 54937.....Rain or Shine. A State Apiary Inspector (Dan) will be there to perform a hive inspection, and he usually demonstrates how to do a sugar shake or alcohol roll for mite counts. Demo time is 10:00. D has invited everyone to show up early and stroll the grounds, but do bring water, chairs if you want a place to sit, and any snacks you may want. Protective gear is a must if you want to get close to the inspection/demonstration. This is an "at your own risk" Event, as are they all. July 14 is the Wisconsin Honey Producers Association summer meeting and everyone is welcome. There is a $20.00 charge which includes lunch. Sign-in starts at 8:00 a.m. with the proceedings beginning at 9:00 a.m.. The meeting will be held at Lions Hall, 145 Dearborn Street, Redgranite, WI. The keynote speaker is Dr. Dennis van Englesdorp from the University of Maryland and he will be speaking on bee health and Varroa control. For further information visit: https://www.wihoney.org/meetings-and-events/spring-district-meetings/meetings-events/ But if you can't make that, also on July 14 Honey Bee Ware is sponsoring a Customer Appreciation picnic at Lions Park, N1089 Municipal Drive, Grennville, WI, 54942 from 11 - 3. It's a family thing, so bring the kids and grandkids. July 21 we will be returning to our regular meeting schedule on the third Saturday of the month at Caestecker Library in Green Lake at 9:30 a.m. August 2 - 5 is the Green Lake County Fair, and the ECWBA will be there! Hopefully Laurie will have a signup schedule available by our July 21 meeting so people can sign up for a time slot then. Gerard I'm sure everyone is wondering how the (3) Vermont mutt queens are doing. I'll tell you anyway. You know how it is when you get a scenario in your head, but life has a different plan?
Queen 1 was placed in a nuc that had one loaded queen cell that the bees were attending to. The beekeeper (me, in this case) figured they'd be really excited about a fertile, laying queen and would abandon their efforts to raise a queen and have to wait several weeks for her to start laying, if she even made it back to the hive. However, I found the queen, dead, on the screened bottom board and the queen cell capped. Apparently they're as big of gamblers as I am. Queen 2 is in a package hive that had a continuing chalkbrood problem. She replaced the original queen. I haven't seen any eggs or larvae that I know are hers yet, but I did see the queen, and she is marked blue. So the question is, does the producer mark all queens blue, or is she a survivor from 2015? I sent them an email asking that question, but have not received a response yet. I'll be checking for brood again in a few days. Queen 3 was introduced to a very large, but queenless colony. I found her, and larvae, in the bottom deep. Big, plump, golden, no blue mark. So, if the producer does mark all queens blue, where'd she come from? She now bears a red mark. Summary: Queen 1 - I should have left the colony alone, or destroyed the queen cup and waited a couple of hours to introduce her (caged). Lesson learned. Queen 2 - If she is, in fact, a 2015 queen and she lays enough eggs for a supersedure, I'd be okay with that. Genetics from a queen with that kind of survivability sounds good to me. But if she has stopped laying, the supplier and I will need to come an understanding. Replacement or refund. Queen 3 - To quote Meatloaf, "1 out of 3 ain't bad". (But I disagree.) So the story isn't over and I'm sure you'll all be watching your Inboxes for the next edition. I hope that everyone has done some sort of mite control by now so that you have healthy bees for the honey flow, which is underway. For my hives, I am on Day 9 of the 14 day FormicPro treatment. While cutting the grass and unwanted plants in the apiary to open the flyways, I checked several witness boards to take a look at the mite drop. One colony had 0, and they had had an oxalic acid spray treatment while still in the package. The other two had 3 and 4 mites. Those are large survivor colonies. The witness boards have been in for 9 days, is this stuff even working or are my colonies just nearly mite-free? I'll be doing sugar shakes after the treatment period. I had a great time at Walleye Weekend on Saturday afternoon talking to people interested in bees. I was able to point out to them what was happening in the observation hive, and they were impressed with how bees work, not ever having seen them in action. The typical initial question was "Where's the queen", but there was no queen so I pointed out the uncapped larvae being fed by the nurse bees, and talked a bit about how that works. Every so often a bee would climb on to the single drone cell to the left of the capped worker brood and fan her wings, so I could point that out and talk about how a bee larva needs to be kept around 94 degrees F to develop properly and that the bee was generating heat to keep it warm. The demo hive served as a very nice educational tool, as was the intent all along. I didn't make it to the Markesan June Dairy Days parade, but Patti said it was a good time. She said they kept a smoker going this time, and hopefully we'll hear more about the Event on June 23. Pictures Patti! I know you have some. June 23 is our next meeting, and it will be held at the Rushford Meadery and Winery, 8389 Liberty School Road, Omro, WI, 54963, 9:30 a.m. We'll take a tour of the place and everyone can see the extractor and the bees. If you want to go back to visit the bees, you should be prepared with your protective gear. (They are currently undergoing a FormicPro treatment but will be done before the meeting.) Shane has listed this as an Event on his website, so there may be interested folks joining us. July 7 is Field Day at D's apiary, N7928 County Road WH, Fond du Lac, WI, 54937.....Rain or Shine. A State Apiary Inspector (Dan) will be there to perform a hive inspection, and he usually demonstrates how to do a sugar shake or alcohol roll for mite counts. Demo time is 10:00. D has invited everyone to show up early and stroll the grounds, but do bring water, chairs if you want a place to sit, and any snacks you may want. Protective gear is a must if you want to get close to the inspection/demonstration. This is an "at your own risk" Event, as are they all. July 14 is the Wisconsin Honey Producers Association summer meeting and everyone is invited. There is a $20.00 charge which includes lunch. Sign-in starts at 8:00 a.m. with the proceedings beginning at 9:00 a.m.. The meeting will be held at Lions Hall, 145 Dearborn Street, Redgranite, WI. The keynote speaker is Dr. Dennis van Englesdorp from the University of Maryland and he will be speaking on bee health and Varroa control. For further information visit: https://www.wihoney.org/meetings-and-events/spring-district-meetings/meetings-events/ July 21 we will be returning to our regular meeting schedule on the third Saturday of the month at Caestecker Library in Green Lake at 9:30 a.m. August 2 - 5 is the Green Lake County Fair, and the ECWBA will be there! Hopefully Laurie will have a signup schedule available by our June 23 meeting so people can sign up for a time slot then, think about it, and then sign up for more at our July 21 meeting. BTW, while mowing the apiary the scent of honey was in the air. Keep an eye on your supers and add another as they get full of capped honey, or remove capped frames and add empty ones, or foundation. Stay ahead of your bees. Neglect doesn't cause only dead bees, it also causes swarms. Gerard Anyone interested in participating in the Markesan Dairy Days parade, it's Saturday, June 9!
ECWBA members can meet at Paul's house on the southwest corner of Caroline and Margaret Streets. If you want to do a cookout, show up at 5:00 with your own food, beverages, and chairs. Grills will be hot. Parade lineup starts at 6:30. And I hope that everyone can spend a little time at our booth at Walleye Weekend in Fond du Lac this Saturday or Sunday. Have a great honey bee promoting weekend! Gerard |
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March 2019
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