Minutes of the VT State Beekeepers Meeting, January 23, 2007
Winter Meeting, Vermont Beekeepers Association
Barre, Vermont, January 23, 2207
The
meeting, which was well attended with over 70 members present, was brought to order
at 9:30 by Mike Palmer, the president of VBA.
Announcements
1. A Calvin Davis from
Kingston, Ontario would like to purchase some sugar maple pollen for which he will
pay $80 a pound. He can be emailed at norma.davis@sympatico.ca
2. VBA was looking
for two members to be a representative and an alternate at the National Honey Board.
The benefits were explained and volunteers were asked for. Charles (Chas) E. Mraz
agreed to serve as the member and his father, William (Bill) A. Mraz, agreed to be
the alternate.
3. Thousand of bees in 13 states (so far) from coast to coast are dying
from a yet to be diagnosed disease. It's current moniker is Colony Collapse Disorder
(CCD) and any beekeepers who have unexplained colony deaths that don't fit the normal
death patterns should record all the facts they can and report them to VBA and/or
Steve Parise. Some the the unusual occurrences are: few bees in the hive but often
a queen, some brood, honey but no workers. Virtually no dead bees in the hive or
in the vicinity of the hive. Most of you have already received a notification in
previous emails from VBA of this new threat but more information can be found at
the Cornell U web site.
4. A Masterbeekeeper's Colony Record Card appeared on the
back of the day's agenda. If you would like one go to www.masterbeekeeper.org/PDF/Colony_Card.PDF
5.
New England Bee Breeders Association is in the beginning stages getting organized.
Check the VBA web site to get on their mailing list. Their main purpose right now
is to be producers of Northern Queens that are adapted to our northern climate, rather
than buying the southern ones.
6. VBA is starting a Scholarship Program to encourage
younger people to become interested in beekeeping. The average age of the current
American beekeeper is 55.
7. Cornell University is starting to digitalize all bee
books and is seeking contributions for the project. The VBA members present unanimously
voted to send them $250.
8. The Summer VBA meeting will be on July 28 (Saturday) in
Middlebury. Details will be forth coming.
9. Gary Keogh, a representative from USDA,
wants to register all bee keepers in Vermont in order to make a survey of beekeeping
in America. (The VBA list is confidential thus cannot be used.) Signing up is free
and "totally confidential." "No other U.S. government agency, including the IRS,
can get access to it." A brochure on the subject can probably be gotten from the
VBA.
Business Meeting
Treasurer's Report by John Tardie
Total Cash Available as of 7/21/06
was $8,116.97
After a subsequent itemized income of $4,711.96,
$5,000 was deposited
in a Keybank CD leaving a balance of $7,828.93
Itemized expenditures left a check
book balance as of 1/22/07 of $6,044.12
The report was unanimously approved by a voice
vote
Committee Reports
Web Site by Randy Potvin
There is a new market place page
Submit
things for sale (free). All items will be put on a master page.
Also send in recipes.
Promotion
Board by Lynn Lang
Cookbooks are selling well but since there are only about 400 left,
they will have to be reprinted.
The new book will have an inside cover with contact
numbers to buy things.
Send in any questions which will go out to the members to hopefully
be answered
Workshops by Bill Mares
Going very well. There were 22 people in the night
classes in Beekeeping.
Bill encourages more members to sign up as mentors. One does
not need a lot of experience:
Even a year or two of knowledge could be very helpful
to a would-
beekeeper.
Bill also asked for any suggestions for future
workshops. He hopes to have 6 or 7 this year.
He
judged a Honey Tasting Contest (I believe at the Tumbridge Fair) which had 23 entries.
He encourages more people to enter the contest next year.
During this year's hive
inspections he found the following:
There are 1637 registered beekeepers in the State
of Vermont who have 9,861 hives in 2,054 bee yards. The depressing news was that
of the 3,125 hives he inspected, 93% of them were infested with varroa mites. His
advice: "Don't just assume you don't have the problem." He encourages all beekeepers
to be careful about buying out of state nucs.
Rule: Know your suppliers. They should
give you an inspection certificate as well.
Steve also said that all hives need to
be registered in Vermont (It's free.) This is for your benefit as well as for all
the neighboring beekeepers.
His email address, which might be new for some of you,
is steve.parise@state.vt.us
Featured Speaker: Dewey Caron
Topic: IPM Approach to Mite
Management
IPM, meaning Integrated Pest Management, was a very timely topic what with
93% of our hives infested with mites. But as Mr. Caron noted in a lively presentation:
There is no magic bullet and there never will be. It's an on-
The control options are 1) Biological, 2) Cultural, 3) Genetic
and 4) Chemical. Mr. Caron's work at the University of Delaware has shown that a
hive with 3000 or fewer mites is a tolerable level and he suggested several ways
to determine their number in a colony from using sticky boards in the bottom of the
hive to choosing 300 or so bees at random, covering them with confectionary sugar,
shaking them in a jar (which they don't take too kindly to) and then dumping them
out and counting the mites that have fallen off. The realistic goal is to monitor
the number of mites, since eliminating them completely is virtually impossible.
Although
the newly developed Hygienic bee has shown promise in eliminating many of the mites
in the hive, there needs to be a lot more research done on this bee.
Chemically, the
"hard" chemicals require putting non-
Much more on all of the above
can be found on
The floor was open to questions and several were
asked. A sampling:
Q. What % of a mite's life is spent in the cell versus on the bee?
A.
About 1/4 to 1/3 of a mite's life is traveling around on its host outside the cell.
Q.
Has there been any correlation made between the honey flow and the number of mites?
A.
Unfortunately no.
Follow up observation by the questioner: It seems that in a heavy
honey flow, the bees are
healthier and apparently have fewer mites.
Q. Have any studies
been done on how mites have changed?
A. Again, unfortunately not really.
The conclusion
was that the mite is a relatively new occurrence and a lot more study obviously needs
to be done.
Panel Discussion
Compared with previous attempts at this question and answers
session, which is for and by the members themselves, today the members were quite
active. Sampling:
Q. What about a swarming hive? When I looked in the hive just after
it swarmed, there were 6 or so virgin queens running around.
A. It's best to do nothing.
The workers are keeping the virgin queens in their cells. As soon as you open the
hive, the order is disrupted and the queens escape.
Questioner: But it was only a
few minutes.
A. Virgin queens can escape in 10 or 15 seconds. It's just not a good
idea to go into the hive at all at this time.
Q. Once two different swarms poured
forth from two separate colonies at the same time and merged in a nearby tree. What
should I have done?
A. Nothing. Let them sort it out. They will. They'll just come
back together after any attempt you might make at separating them.
Q. What about electric
fences to control bears? Which is better: a pulsating or constant electric fence?
A.
(A lot of discussion followed this question.) Some of it:
Bait the fence with a strip
of bacon or an old sardine can. A bear will check things first. Zap!
You want to zap
it before he pushes through the fence. Once he's gone through an
electric fence, he'll
always go through.
It doesn't really matter what kind of electric fence you use.
Q.
Is there any bear designed electric fence info on the web?
A. Yes. (Unfortunately,
I got only part of the address, but the first part was nhbeekeeper(s)...)
Q. What
about skunks?
A. (A lot of discussion followed this question.) Some of it:
Put fertilizer
in front. When the skunk licks his feet after eating some of the dead bees, he doesn't
like the taste.
Put chicken wire in front. He gets his feet caught in it and doesn't
like it.
Put Have-
Have-
Shoot
it, the lead solution. (Enjoy the smell forever.)
Put moth balls in front.
The general
conclusion was that, although the skunks can certainly irate the bees by scratching
on the outside to get the bees to come so they can eat them and thus make the bees
very ornery for the beekeeper, the skunks don't tip over the hives, so they are just
pests.
Just before lunch, Mile Palmer offered an interesting observation from last
summer. He had about 50 hives, divided roughly in half. One had SMR (Suppressed Mite
Reproduction) queens and the other was a control, i.e. regular queen, group. At the
end of the summer the control group had 40 to 50% mite infestation, whereas the SMR
queen group had only 5-
Mr. Caron opened his remarks
by saying that in the old days, beekeepers experienced only a 5-
He said a fall inspection, which doesn't
really prevent losses, does give the beekeeper an idea of the health of his hives.
Here one looks for a brood pattern in the middle with honey supplies at the top and
pollen at the bottom. Then, of course, the hive should have a large supply of honey
in the box above the cluster.
Wrapping the hive has had mixed results. This protection
is pretty much up to the individual beekeeper. But Mr. Caron and several of the members
present all stressed that combining two weak hives just makes for one weak hive.
He
took questions from the floor and concluded his presentation with the fact that the
good news is that there is a lot of study going into the causes behind winter losses.
Despite being a beekeeper
for less than three years, Russ has been very aggressive in his approach. In his
first year he used no chemicals. Instead he introduced one drone foundation frame
in the spring replacing it about four times during the summer. He put the removed
frame, which was full of drone larvae, in the freezer and then counted the number
of dead drones and mites. All five of his active hives showed a reduced number of
mites at each removal.
Word of caution, though. Do NOT put the dead frame of drones
back in the hive in hopes the bees will clean it up. They seemed to detest the smelly
rotting mess as much as he did. (To this, one of the members suggested an easier
way: Put a shallow frame in a deep box. The bees will most likely make drone cells
on the bottom of it, thus providing an attractive home for the mites and drone eggs.
Remove the frame and scrap off the drone cells. No need for cleaning out the combs.)
Although
Russ admitted that this technique was not practical for the large apiaries, it did
offer an interesting possibility for the smaller beekeeper. (One member noted, though,
that the beekeeper still didn't know how many mites there might be in the other cells
in the hive.)
I think, however, we all admired the bravery and sincerity of a beginner
beekeeper like Russ to be willing to stand up at a meeting like this and speak about
what he was trying to do. He received a warm round of applause.
EAS 2007: Delaware:
Dewey Caron
Finally, Mr. Caron made an enthusiastic endorsement of the 52nd annual
EAS meeting to be held at the University of Delaware next summer from August 8-
Mike Palmer adjourned the meeting at 3:15 with an
endorsement of this EAS meeting.
Respectfully submitted by Jeffrey Hamelman
with the
above notes on the meeting written by Charlie Cushman
____________________