This is not a meeting notice. The next monthly meeting is not for almost two more weeks, but there are so many time-sensitive announcements, we are sending them out now.

 CONTENTS:

FORAGE PROJECT – Tobey Wilson

THE HIVE MIND fellowship and discussion  – Gina Cuff

MANUALS UPDATED

WASBA RENEWAL notices

SAVE THE TREES!

SECURITY & PRIVACY

RESOURCES

2023 NUC SUPPLIER LIST

NUC PACKAGE INSTALLATION PROCEDURE

CLASSES

    APPRENTICE 6:30PM Thursday April 13th

CALENDAR

NEWSLETTERS

HIVESIDES

SPRING HIVE CARE

     FEED

     WRAPPED OR UNWRAPPED

     YJs, robbing SCREENS

BEE TIPS & TRIVIA

QUEEN PROJECT 

FORAGE PROJECT

We have members starting new projects. First, Tobey Wilson is asking for forage reports throughout the beekeepeing season this year and asks you potential citizen scientists to send in information about the plants you see honey bees visiting: what plants, where, when, etc. Right now she is taking information informally via the SnoKing Facebook discussion group, but is developing an online form so that beekeepers can easily enter information about their "honey bee on flower" sightings. Watch here and on the discussion page for updates on Tobey's project.

Another project started by a fellow beekeeper:

THE HIVE MIND starts 6PM April 13th, meeting online on 2nd Thursdays!

A huge thank you to Gina Cuff who just finished teaching Beginner. Gina and her students had such a wonderful time that they have decided to start a group to share their beekeeping experiences, ask questions and stay in touch throughout the beekeeping season. Gina is scheduling “The Hive Mind” discussion group to meet on Zoom the second Thursday of each month from 6-7pm.

If interested, contact Gina at ginacuff@gmail.com to receive the meeting link.Gina says "If you are interested in joining the group, but find you are also taking the Apprentice class on Thursdays, feel free to join for the first 30 minutes before the Apprentice class starts."

MANUALS UPDATED

New digital manuals are now available for all 3 levels. If you already took a class and have the old manual, let us know and we can send you the updated 2023 digital version, hot off the press!

SAVE THE TREES!

Manuals for classes are now available in 2 identical formats: a digital (.pdf) manual as email attachment  and a print version mailed via USPS.

However:

SnoKing has received requests for a “Save Trees!” option, allowing students to receive ONLY the digital version and to NOT receive the print manual.

Please select your option each time you register for a class:

A digital manual only in order to  “Save Trees!”

with updates emailed to you

or

Both a digital and a print manual

WASBA RENEWAL notices

Some of you may have received WASBA renewal notices, but your dues are paid for 2023. If you received a certificate from WASBA since last October, your 2023 dues were gifted to you with the certificate.

WASBA is experiencing some bookkeeping and organizational difficulties right now. Your membership dues support them, although the only significant direct benefit to you is the excellent curriculum we purchase from them and teach for them.

Thanks for reading so much print so far without pictures. For relief, Below is a picture of thawing my honey bank earlier in the winter. Best food for honey bees is honey from your own apiary! They do appreciate it being warmed after taken out of the freezer!

2023 NUC & PACKAGE SUPPLIER LIST on Home page

At 9 pages, this must be the most comprehensive Western Washington list available. However, your local bee club and beekeepers can be the best sources for late season bees and  replacement queens, so keep in touch with them. 

SECURITY & PRIVACY

More than one WASBA member bee club has had their website hacked in the past year. For that reason, SnoKing wishes to reassure all of you that we share your personal information only as required to request your certificates with WASBA. Otherwise, we do not voluntarily share your data, even with WASBA. That is one of the reasons that we will not be participating in the Bee Club of the Year award, because WASBA wants more of your personal information than we feel comfortable sharing without your express consent, particularly at this time.

This is also why you must exit our website to use paypal to pay for a class. If we don't have any financial information, we hope to escape the notice of hackers. We are also relying on our website provider's internal security.

CLASSES

LAST CALL! for APPRENTICE class starting 6:30PM Thursday April 13th for 7 consecutive Thursdays. It is timed to finish May 25th --before school is out and we rush to get everything possible done during our all too brief summer weather.

Class includes manual, and WASBA certificate and 2023 WASBA dues gifted to the student upon completion of the course. Questions? Call or text 206-859-7392 or email eliochel@snokingbka.org.

Prerequisites: 1 year beekeeping experience and completion of Beginner.

Note: If you have at least one year of beekeeping and did not complete Beginner yet, contact Eli to ask about challenging the Beginner exam in order to qualify to take Apprentice.

REQUIRED FOR JOURNEYMAN!

Interested in continuing your beekeeping journey with WASBA Journeyman certification? If you are doing club and community service this summer, don't forget that Apprentice certificate is to be earned BEFORE service counted towards the Journeyman requirement.

We encourage any beekeeper approaching 3 years of beekeeping to pursue Journeyman. For many of you, mentoring, teaching, volunteering in your local bee club, presenting about bees and pollinators, staffing booths at fairs and community events and more! is what you do without expecting compensation. However, recognizing that service is part of Journeyman. So,

JOURNEYMAN starting September 11, 2023 class registration is now open at www.snokingbka.or/journeymanapplication

Class includes manual, and WASBA certificate and 2023 WASBA dues gifted to the student upon completion of the course. Questions? Call or text 206-859-7392 or email eliochel@snokingbka.org.

Next BEGINNER BEEKEEPING CLASS is not yet scheduled but should start after school is out. Leave your contact information on We are looking at the possibility of an in-person class.

Here is a visual interlude from all these anouncements:

Following is a chart offering hope during these times of rain and sleet. Washington is in the top 10 honey producing states! Hooray!

HIVESIDES

First official Hiveside is the 15th at my place, Maltby, 15324 228th ST SE,Snohomish 98296. We will demo OAV (wand and gun) and then talk about winterizing and the changeover to spring management. We can talk different types of hive setups and equipment, feeders, vertical and long hives, etc. Unless the weather improves, we can't enter the hives. Expert beekeepers can dive into a hive at less than 65 or windy but it's not a good idea when you want to pass frames around and keep the hive open more than a few minutes. An email to eliochel@snokingbka.org with number attending is a good idea, even last minute notice is okay. We have some spare bee jackets and veils. The cold will keep these first hiveside short in length but long on information that can be shared.

HiveSide Managers:

Granite Falls - Ron - beebuddy.skba@gmail.com 206-719-3604

Maltby - Eli - eliochel@snokingbka.org  206-859-7392

Email eliochel@snokingbka.org for exact address for each Hiveside, to confirm that there are no last minute changes to date and time, and to tell SnoKing that you are attending.

Hiveside schedules constantly change. At this time, we expect that:

Maltby Hivesides will open in April, Saturdays 11 AM to 1 PM unless at a member’s home.

Granite Falls Hivesides will open in late April or May, possibly with nuc installation at the apiary.

CALENDAR page shows classes online (Beginner, Apprentice, Journeyman) and - (Hivesides) already scheduled.

NEWSLETTERS on the SnoKing Home page  - has links to all past newsletters.

Resources – coming soon – Those helpful resources that are currently found on the “Files” section of our FB group page but will become more accessible at www.snokingbka.org .

KISS  - Keep IT Simple in Spring

All  we have to do is keep our hives dry, fed, treated and “do no harm.”

However, the daytime highs just get to 50s F and the sleet returns!

FEED:

No matter how excellent the sources of pollen and some of nectar in Western WA at this time of year, remember that bees were not meant to fly in the rain. Even assuming that they could fly in the rain, each rain drop represents a significant % of a honey bee’s body weight. What if their wings get wet?  Also, individual bees are cold-blooded; only the colony as a whole is warm-blooded surviving winter temperatures by clustering. At 45F and below, honey bees chill to a stop. Even up to 57 F, they cluster inside the hive or must stay in motion to survive even short periods outside.

DRY OR LIQUID?

Is it warm enough to switch from dry to liquid feed in Western Washington? This spring is remaining colder than usual in many areas. Here’s one possible solution: let the bees decide. In the photo above/below, see how the bees have access on the inner cover to both solid and liquid. That's what I found worked last year. The bees decide which they want to use, depending each day on average ambient temperature The bees can get through the inner cover hole to the granulated sugar and to the syrup jars. Outer cover to one side and insulation go right back on top of this feed setup. I don't use in frame feeders for fear of chilling brood each time I have to get into hives to refeed or change out feeder for a clean feeder, but in frame feed should stay warmer inside the hive and that would also help the bees take syrup.

WRAPPED OR UNWRAPPED?

On facebook and social media, the “to wrap or not to wrap” controversy rages on. Each beekeeper decides where s/he stands on this issue and  but probably whatever management techniques a beekeeper is using, the “Do No Harm” rule applies. “Do no harm” includes avoiding sudden temperature changes. With sleet continuing (Sunday in both Covington, King County and Maltby, Snohomish County), if your hives are relying on that thermal stability, sudden removal of insulation could chill the broodnest.  Right now, hives are in the winter bee to spring bee changeover. This means that the old winter bees that lived months longer than summer bees do are now dying.  Further population loss or setback due to chilled brood at this critical time of spring changeover could reduce chances of hive survival. Late season drops to freezing at nights also stress hives by threatening an expanding broodnest.

     Keep pollen sub patty on top of brood frames if you can place it there without chilling brood. If ambient temp is still too low, place it just under inner cover not blocking the ventilation hole in the cover.

      Oddly enough, ambient temperatures have averaged higher this year than last and the number of sunbreaks for the bees has been much higher from December 2022 through now than in the previous year. Still, night lows still fall to freezing occasionally.

MONITORING

In many parts of Western WA, it is still best for the hive if we only check it in a non-invasive way: checking debris on the slideout, the ground in front of the hive, the traffic at the entrance on a warmer day.

Cleansing flights and pollen foraging are fun to watch but a nectar flow sufficient to support the growing spring population is still months away, so keep checking those stores. Heft, weigh, peek at the frame tops in the topmost box but . . .

RESIST DISRUPTING THE CLUSTER!

Although the lowest extended temperatures of winter may be behind us, freezing weather is still in the forecasts ahead for many of us in Western Washington, so we caution against being too quick to open hives.

Below - photo of big leaf maple flower in case the sun comes out and you see one!

A inspection on a 50 degree F high one day may be tempting, but freezing nights before and after stress the hive. Bees need to be able to reform the cluster around the queen to keep her about 68-70F , and now most colonies are already raising brood and must keep those young bees at 92-94 F. Be sure your bees can regroup and rewarm the brood you are chilling with an inspection.

YELLOW JACKET TRAPS

Protection from robbing by overwintering, mated yellow jacket queens coming out of dormancy will be critical this spring. A warm, sunny extended Fall such as we just had is predicted to result in more queens overwintering than usual. We can hope that the below freezing temps last fall will keep their numbers down, but Facebook groups are already reporting sightings. Those queens are proving that they can fly at 10 degrees F lower than our sweet bees. Time to get those traps baited and out!

ROBBING SCREENS

Also, some of our hives need protection from each other! Time to get robbing screens on! Ty Carlson just posted some very interesting video of his landing boards which show struggles between bees. Stronger hives “wake up” and become active earlier than weaker “sleepy” hives. Despite availability of pollen at this time of year, there is no significant nectar flow, so as the foragers start to fly, they perceive dearth. Dearth leads to robbing and bees are efficiency experts not moralists. Robbing is more efficient than desperate searches for enough nectar to feed a growing population.

QUEEN PROJECT - delayed

The queen rearing project is waiting on unreliable Western Washington weather. At this point, we will present the plan at the 3rd Wednesday April 19th meeting. It is easiest to raise healthy, robust queens during a major nectar flow, so we may wait for the main flow in June. There will be 2 types of queen raising classes: (1) a day or 2 that you can drop by and try your hand at grafting and (2) a class requiring several weeks of involvement from setting up the cell builder hive to grafting day, to setting up mating nucs, to moving queen cells into those mating nucs, to verifying the productivity of those queens.

     The drop-by days to try your hand with grafting tools will be on the calendar for Hivesides.

BEE TIPS & TRIVIA is up and running again after a pause.

The bee jokes of 2022 are still there but 2023 is all about interesting bee facts, some outright weird!

     If you select the category “Jokes” on the blog page, you can still chuckle your way to relaxation.

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

If you have a talent to share or a project you would like to do for the club, let us know. We do need:

Class registrar

Videographers

Wix website technician

Thank you for reading this newsletter. The next newsletter will include the zoom link for the meeting, not this Wednesday but over a week from now, on April 19th.

HERE'S HOPING FOR WARMER WEATHER!