Photo above of Journeyman Sandy Pruett's apiary

SnoKing Beekeepers October Meeting

Time: Oct 18, 2023 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Meeting ID: 863 4861 6793

Passcode: 506159

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WASBA October 7-8, 2023 Conference Review

Hi, Beekeepers!

Q &A plus an informal review of the WASBA conference, particularly its speakers, will be the meeting topic tonight, officially from 6:30 to 8PM, but of course, we will stay to talk bees as long as desired.

CONTENTS:

Meeting Agenda

WASBA Conference

WASBA Board meeting

State of the Hive

Feature Article:

Pesticide Hive Die Out

Fair Committee

Auditing classes free for members

Membership Drawing

Extractors

Donations

Journeyman Opportunities

Discussion groups

   The Hive Mind

   Facebook

   Trophallaxis

Classes

   Apprentice starts Tuesday

Club Apiaries

 MEETING AGENDA:

An informal synopsis of the conference will be offered by attendees. This will undoubtedly lead to lots of discussion about favorite researchers and information sources. Attendees are promised conference recordings but the release of the recordings may be delayed due to technical difficulties with some presentations, particularly the ”Hobby” track. WASBA is reported to be working on re-recording or otherwise replacing those. So, the detailed annual SnoKing Beekeepers synopsis of the conference will be delayed, perhaps until December, although we will report what we saw and enjoyed the weekend of Oct. 7-8.

Washington State Beekeepers Association Conference was greatly improved over last year in attendance, accommodations, and relevance of speakers to hobbyist/small scalers!

Discounted attendance at the door was popular and attendance would have been even higher if the speaker list had been published more than 3 weeks in advance. At least on Saturday, there appeared to be at least 200 attendees, multiple times the in-person attendance in Othello last year.

WASBA BOARD meeting highlights:

The annual meeting was held at the end of the conference.

Elections were held: 8 were elected to fill vacancies on the 11-member board. 4 of the 8 had been appointed mid-year and their election was to confirm that appointment, plus 4 new members were elected.

Scholarships were given by WASBA to a couple of WSU graduate students.

Unless WASBA board hears differently before Jan. 1, 2024, and unless someone offers to make other arrangements, the conference will be held in the same place Oct. 5, 2024.

There was a call for correctional center help; WASBA helps Oregon and Washington inmates earn 100s of beekeeping certificates each year.

Expected start date for WSU Master Beekeeping class is now June 2024.

STATE OF THE HIVE

Hi, beekeepers! We need to have done our best and relax. Remember beekeeping is supposed to be simple: Keep the bees dry, fed, and treated for mites and “do no harm. Here’s hoping for a warmer drier 2024 spring than 2022 and 2023!

     At the cooler temperatures expected in the near future, or already being experienced by some of you, only oxalic acid and the “hard” synthetic varroacides can be used (ApiVar, Checkmite, and Apistan). When storing honey, be careful to mark the tops of the frames of any miticide-contaminated honey, so you don’t forget and accidentally harvest it in the spring for human use.

Yellowjackets: Only the largest yellowjackets are still showing up at the Maltby Apiary hives, which may mean these are the mated queens preparing to overwinter. Among lessons learned this year about yellow jackets: find a way to protect nucs and weak hives as soon as they show up, or better yet, before they show up. We strengthened hives by merging nucs to help them defend against robbing, but that meant that we had to abandon double nuc overwintering of reserve queens (two 4-frame nucs on a 10-frame split bottom board with separate entrances).

In 2022, if there was not enough brood to overwinter each queen with her own colony in an 8-frame hive stack, queens were overwintered with their colonies in double nucs, two 4-frame nucs on a divided 10-frame base. These double nucs overwintered successfully 2023, proving it worked to maintain reserve queens. 

Queens: In all hives, we hope you have completed merging small hives and any requeening by now. If you lose a queen this late in the season, consider merging a healthy queenless colony with a queenright colony.

      For discussion of all this and whatever else you beekeepers want to discuss, we will see you 6:30PM Wed. “Let’s talk bees!”

FEATURE ARTICLE:

"Pesticide Hive Die Out"

By Sandy Pruett, Journeyman

Eight years of beekeeping I’ve never seen a massive colony die off so fast in two days. Our hives are close to the house, we watch or monitor the bees every day; especially with the yellowjackets infestation we are constantly working to reduce the stress on the bees. Plus we had 60 hives moved into our neighbors about a block away which causes robbing, more stress. We were just coming to the end of a 14 day Apiguard treatment and a week having our queens caged for a brood break. Mite count on all 11 hives has been low, between 3, 5, and 6 after doing a 21-day course of OA Vapor.

So I was gathering everything to start working the hives, smoker lite, syrup spray bottle, bee jackets, a large freezer bag for the Apiguard tins, bee journal. As I walked around the front of the Cedar Hive, the bees looked funny behind the robbing screen.  I looked closer there was no movement, they looked dead. Oh No, this colony has been a strong and massive hive! As I pulled the robbing screen down, the bees were piled up all along the entrance to the hive. This would be the hive I worked first!

As the hive was opened up, bees were moving slow. I found the queen cage. Bees were hanging out with their tongues sticking out and I let the queen out. Moved down to the first deep. Bees were all dead; even yellow jackets inside the hive were dead, all so strange. Put hive back together and left gloves, hive tools all in place so not to contaminate another hive. After working the other strong hives next to it, came back to the Cedar Hive, took off the robbing screen, scraped dead bees out on a newspaper and put robbing screen back on.

Had to leave and go to town, back about three hours later, major robbing was taking place with the Cedar Hive, so closed off robbing screen. Next morning as I checked on the hive there was a second die off of bees.

Scraped the hive out of dead bees for a second time, this hive is definitely contaminated. But as the dead bees are pouring out, what falls out is the queen and she is still moving around; she looked thin. Went and got one of those wooden queen cages with the screen on it, put her in, rubbed a little water over the screen, got some syrup between my fingers to warm it up and rub it on the screen too. She started perking up. Took the queen cage and put it in my husband’s shirt pocket to keep her warm till I  figured out what to do with her.

At this point, what am I willing to sacrifice in equipment and bees to save her if she is contaminated?. I had a super on one of the hives that had nectar and capped honey and bees. Moved it over on top of my Dk Blue hive, put on top for warmth and placed queen in the super, bees took right to her.

Checked the next day, bees had not killed her, so let her loose. Added a small amount of sugar mixture, closed up. After the rain will check them again.

Rain starting so will have to wait for 5 days till it stops.

Going back thorough my Bee Journal, the history of this Cedar Hive usually had 4 or more frames of capped brood, larva and eggs with lots of nectar, pollen and capped honey.

As the rain stopped, I was anxious to open the hive, what would I find??

With all the robbing, there was not any brood, larva, eggs left and all the pollen, nectar, capped honey was gone. Robbers can empty a frame pretty quick.

Only capped brood that had not immerged were left.

And another scraping of dead bees

I tried to locate pesticide testing by calling WSU Clark County Extension, WSU Skamania County Extension, OSU Extension Service Ed Ctr and OSU Honey Bee Lab. Could not get a hold of anyone and they did not return my messages.

Bob Binnie has a Video out for September one of his bee yards has been hit with pesticides two or three times, killing bees or whole colonies. Interesting listening to him talk and what he is doing to recover. And not having his bees in that yard next year.

So the recommendation is to let the hive equipment sit and air out. Frames will be frozen and stored separately. I don’t think I will even attempt to use next year. Don’t know what I will do with the frames, hold for now.

And the Queen, she has started laying. There is enough resources from other hives to give her brood, nectar, pollen and honey and I will do that today, that is if they made it through the cold night.  We’ll just see how she gets along.

Amazing that the queen lived through it all.

As a Beekeeper, you learn something New every Year.

TO BE CONTINUED: This is only the story through October 1st; Sandy promises to update us in the next newsletter.

FAIR COMMITTEE is still planning to meet but some of us were caught up in attending the conference. Email eliochel@snokingbka.org if you wish to join that committee, or have comments or suggestions for the committee. A fundraising committee may form, closely tied to the fair committee. More information and a meeting time and date will be announced in the next newsletter. Fair chair: Walt Filson waltfilson@gmail.com

AUDITING CLASSES: For those who need certification, there is still room in the apprentice class starting this Tuesday Oct. 17. In addition, SnoKing offers an unusual member benefit: a member can audit a class for free for any level already achieved. Email eliochel@snokingbkar.org to be placed on the weekly class email list at no cost for current members.

This is of particular benefit to those who took classes pre-2019, before the major rewrite of the manuals. Any member who previously earned a certificate is welcome to join a current class for free and see that current level information.

In particular, some of you Journeymen might wish a review of academic material before applying for the new Master Beekeeper program expected to begin in 2024. WASBA reported at the annual board meeting held at the conference that the expected date for start of the new WSU Master Beekeeper course is now June 2024.

Journeyman is the most completely rewritten and improved of the course levels and of particular interest to experienced beekeepers. The newer print manuals can be purchased even if you have already earned Journeyman. The easiest way to join as an “alumnus” is to email eliochel@snokingbka.org and ask to receive the weekly class emails with link, handouts and other information.

FUTURE SNOKING MEETING TOPICS: The featured speaker at our November meeting will be Bri Price, the new Honey Bee Outreach Coordinator, to be based at WSU’s facility in Puyallup, WA. Also, the December meeting presentation will be the detailed summary and analysis of the WASBA October 7 & 8 Conference talks.

MEMBERSHIP DRAWING: Those of you who volunteered at our fair booth earned a chance per shift. Don’t forget that you can also earn one more chance by paying dues for 2023-2024 unless you have already done so. Because the entry deadline for the fair volunteer and membership drawing is Nov. 10, we will be again doing the actual drawing live at the Nov. 15 monthly meeting. Two of the largest prizes – handcrafted quilt by Anna Filson and a Mann Lake deep single box hive set – were displayed at the fair.

EXTRACTORS: Three extractors are now available for use by club members. Get more information at the meeting or contact Ron 206-859-7392 or Eli. We owe a big thank you to James Cook who just donated the third one for loan!

DONATIONS:

    Donations are growing our club; thank you to all who donate equipment, money and time.

Latest thank you is to James Cook of Carnation, WA for donation to the club of a 3-frame tangential extractor, a bee jacket and veil and other tools and accessories.

     The largest donation lately was from Robert Swan: dozens of deeps, frame feeders, nuc boxes and more. Thank you, Robert. Some will need refurbishing and cleaning. If you are interested in helping out with this, text Ron Robinson(Granite Falls Apiary Manager) at 206-719-3604. Cleaning and storing equipment is a great way to spend winter months when we can’t be active in our hives.

JOURNEYMAN OPPORTUNITIES:

Staffing the fair booth, the Return of the Salmon (Sultan), etc. may be over for 2023, but numerous service opportunities remain. For example, writing articles of interest to beekeepers (2 service credits per article). See this month’s feature article by Sandy Pruett, who has just completed her Journeyman certificate requirements.

Other suggested topics:

-- personal evolution as a beekeeper

-- scaling up your beekeeping operation, or down, or both

-- review of a favorite speaker or research source/topic you have researched

-- summary of the beekeeping season just ending (your experience or a general perspective of 2023)

More journeyman service possibilities:

-- Teaching WASBA Beginner*

-- Moderating or presenting at discussion groups or meetings.

     *We are aware that WASBA allows anyone who has completed Apprentice with one year beekeeping experience to teach Beginner, as long as they are under the supervision of a Journeyman or Master, but SnoKing limits teaching to beekeepers that have completed the academic WASBA Journeyman class.

DISCUSSION GROUPS:

ASK A BEEKEEPER sessions are on temporary hold.

THE HIVE MIND networking group for beginning and advanced beekeepes continues on 2nd Thursdays. Contact Gina Cuff ginacuff@gmail.com for information and zoom link.

SNOKING BEEKEEPERS discussion group is open to all Western Washington Beekeepers and continues throughout the year on Facebook. Ask to join on Facebook or by emailing beebuddy.skba@gmail.com Ron Robinson with the email that you use on Facebook and he can invite you to join.

JOURNEYMAN LEVEL DISCUSSION GROUP starting 6:30PM November 1st.

     Trophallaxis, an online discussion/networking group, is starting for Master Beekeepers, Journeymen and Journeyman candidates. To join, you must have taken or currently be enrolled in the Journeyman class. Email eliochel@snokingkba.org for the zoom link. The group will start by meeting the first Wednesday of each month. The first meeting will be held November 1st to set goals and agenda for the group. This group can concentrate on meeting the networking and information sharing needs of the intermediate to advanced beekeeper, because other groups such as The Hive Mind can meet the needs of beginners. Sharing can be on a formal or informal basis  be about individual experiences such as scaling up or about general perspectives on beekeeping. As a default topic for each meeting, a research paper or presentation of interest to beekeepers will be reviewed by a member of the group and discussion of the research will follow.

CLASSES Online with SnoKing Beekeepers Assn.

All classes include manual, online testing, and WASBA certificate plus WASBA 2024 membership upon course completion.

APPRENTICE starts 6:30PM this Tuesday October 17. Registration and more information at www.snokingbka.org/apprenticeapplication

Questions? Call or text 206-859-7392 or email eliochel@snokingbka.org.

Next BEGINNER starts Thursday January 11. Registration and more information at www.snokingbka.org/beginnerapplication

The first 2024 Apprentice will start late January or February 2024.

Questions? Call or text 206-859-7392 or email eliochel@snokingbka.org.

Next JOURNEYMAN starts January 14, 2024. Registration and more information can be found at www.snokingbka.org/journeymanapplication

     Although the academic course is only part of Journeyman certification, many Journeyman candidates find that it gives them knowledge and confidence to complete the other requirements, particularly the service hours requirement which may include mentoring, presentations, and other club & community service hours.

CLUB APIARIES:

Closed except by appointment

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

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

Let's "talk bees" this Wednesday 6:30PM:

The mission of the SKBA, a 501c3 member club of WASBA, is to provide educational opportunities, networking and support to beekeepers and people interested in honey bees, particularly those involved in small-scale beekeeping in Washington State west of the Cascades.

"We talk bees!" at SnoKing Beekeepers Association.