Reminder! Cassie Cichorz will present tonight the "Asian Giant Hornet Update" at our monthly meeting. Hope to see you there and "talk bees"!
Time: Wednesday June 15, 2022 6:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Meetings are open to all beekeepers or those interested in beekeeping.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85009973128?pwd=Zy80NHVHbE56Z1pKaXFyRGhOODJFZz09

Meeting ID: 850 0997 3128

Passcode: 790732

Description: Cassie Cichorz is our Asian Giant Hornet Outreach Specialist from the Washington State Dept. of Agriculture. She will bring us up-to-date on the Asian Giant Hornet monitoring and trapping project. SnoKing Beekeepers will again distribute the trap materials Cassie delivers to us in bulk. More information coming on the distribution in time to start our trapping stations the beginning of July.

     We will open the meeting at 6:30 PM with announcements and updates, followed by Ms. Cichorz's presentation. The presentation and meeting will officially be over by 8:30 PM but we can continue to network, Q & A, or share with one another as long as people want to "talk bees."

     Also below in this issue:

Classes:

Beginner & Apprentice courses in progress.

Volunteer Opportunities:

Evergreen State Fair, Return of the Salmon, WASBA 2022 Annual Conference

Hands On Hivesides: outdoors in person mini-classes from now until late August. Open to all who have paid their 2021-2022 dues. Saturdays in Maltby & Sundays in Granite Falls

Beekeeping in June/July in Western Washington: Rain Dearth & the Ultimate Queen Test

Also not to be missed:

Bee Punny! continues with a different Bee Joke each day of the year. Don’t miss the 365 bee jokes, posted one per each day of 2022! Guaranteed “groanworthy.” Bee sure to share them; why groan alone when we can groan together?

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES staffing booths at:

Evergreen State Fair, Monroe, WA, August 25-30, September 1-5, 2022 .

Sign up will be on signupgenius.com, same as last year.

Fair Committee Chairs: Walt and Anna Filson. Questions? Email them at waltfilson1@gmail.com. More information will be coming later this summer.

Return of the Salmon Celebration, Sultan, Washington, Saturday September 24, 2022.

WASBA 2022 Annual Conference, Othello, WA October 1-2, 2022. SnoKing Beekeepers will have a vendor booth there.

Questions about Journeyman service hours? Contact Eli 206-859-7392, eliochel@snokingbka.org .

Rain Dearth and Test for Queen Presence

The usual to-do list for this time of year includes:

1. Prevent swarms, catch swarms, and make splits, as needed or desired. 2. Add boxes to (“super”) established (overwintered) and fast-growing hives, as needed. 3. Monitor the  health and presence of the queen by her laying pattern. If she’s a 2022 queen, a compact brood pattern might not appear right away but should soon. If an older queen, she is more likely to swarm and one sign of that is no or few eggs or young larvae in the hive. If no eggs or young larvae present, is she missing?

Test for Queen Presence

#3, monitoring the queen, has become a problem for many beekeepers in this rain dearth.

In small hives, particularly packages or nucs, the queen is easier to spot, even if unmarked. In larger hives, overwintered or fast-growing, she may not be as visible, so the presence of eggs or young larvae is your best indicator of her continued presence.

However, dearth interferes with using presence of eggs and larvae to detect the queen of a hive. When workers of a colony sense dearth, they stop broodrearing. Workers remove the eggs laid by the queen and use scarce resources instead  to feed the adults of the hive first. After all, without adults, there would be no nurse bees to raise the brood anyway.

Dearth  is a period of insufficient nectar or pollen to meet the needs of a colony. Late July dearth is the one most often discussed by beekeepers. In Western Washington, cloud or rain dearth is as serious as summer drought dearth.  Western Washington has almost year-round pollen forage, if the weather allows foragers to fly to collect it. Nectar is also available much of the year, again if the weather permits collection. This prolonged cool, damp weather is serious rain dearth for our hives in much of Western Washington. Hives have increased in population if we have kept our bees well. Now, hives are overflowing with idle workers of foraging age who can’t leave the hive enough to adequately forage for the colony. Broodrearing has been curtailed, so the young workers have no nurse duties.

The Ultimate Test for Queen Presence

A queen becomes difficult to spot amongst a large population of unemployed workers roaming about without their usual focus on broodrearing and nectar collection. Without eggs or young larvae present to verify her presence, we beekeepers turn to the “ultimate test”. The bees themselves will tell us if they have a queen; we have only to pose the question to them, “Do you have a queen or not?” We do that by introducing a frame with eggs or very young larvae from another hive into the hive suspected to be queenless. The presence of eggs gives the workers a chance to raise a queen by making emergency cells. That tells us that they are queenless.  If instead, the workers simply raise the brood out without making emergency cells, they tell us that they feel that they have a queen. Note: This test also has the added bonus of  introducing brood pheromone into the suspected queenless hive, discouraging the development of a laying worker situation.

Looking forward to "talking bees" with you. Meetings are open to all beekeepers or those interested in beekeeping.

Topic: Asian Giant Hornet Update - SnoKing Beekeepers
Time: Jun 15, 2022 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85009973128?pwd=Zy80NHVHbE56Z1pKaXFyRGhOODJFZz09

Meeting ID: 850 0997 3128
Passcode: 790732
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