If you have missed any of our meetings or are interested in joining our club and want to know what we talk about here are our meeting minutes.
June 2013
The meeting began at 7:00 p.m., on June 10, with 11 members in
attendance.
Gerry wanted to know if people had to inform you if they were spraying
insecticide around your bees. Byron said if Dougan couldn’t answer it,
he would. Keith Dougan deferred to Byron Miller.
Miller said, “If you have your bees registered they have to do so, but
if your bees are not registered, they don’t have to, they can spray
them anyhow.”
“How do you register your bees?” Dougan asked.
“Iowa does it over the internet,” Dorene Claybaker chipped in.
“Put them on your assessment sheet!” Byron informed him, “and if they
spray those bees they are paid for. They assess the personal property
tax of a hive of bees as $70, more than a cow.”
“I was not aware Missouri even had anything,” Keith said.
“How about if it drifts onto your property and kills your bees,” Gerry asked.
“It depends on how good a lawyer you got and how much B.S. you got.”
Byron said. “Helzer got his paid for. They killed his bees and they
sprayed right on top of them, but there is more people that have lost
than has gained.”
“They showed up on an ariel survey. You can see the beehives,” Gerry said.
“They know they are there,” Byron said. “But that don’t mean you’ve
registered them.” “No,” Gerry agreed.
Keith said, “But that is what they spray off of. I would think. So
they are sitting there looking at them and know they are there….”
“But if you don’t notify them, they are fine spraying them,” Byron
said. “The last time I lost bees I heard, I saw your bees down there
but I didn’t want to fool with ‘em, cuz I mighta got stung. I just
move my bees. “
Gerry said he thought he had turned his in on his assessment sheet
this year. Keith added that they had raised his property tax value
about $14,000. He asked Larry if he had been reassessed, and Larry
said he didn’t think so. Dorene added that she had also been
reassessed in Iowa and hers had gone up. Gerry said he hadn’t heard
anything about his.
“If land gets assessed at $6000 an acre that’s what you are going to
get assessed at,” Byron said.
“… and if land gets assessed at $2000, you’re still going to pay it,”
Larry added.
“You got so long to appeal that,” Byron said. “NOW I am just saying,”
as Keith shook his head, “the people that appeal it are going to win
and if you don’t appeal it you are going to get stuck, now that is
just what it amounts to.”
“The squeaky wheel gets greased,” Gerry said and Byron agreed.
“Larry got notified they were going to spray around his bee this year
and he had to go cover them,” Byron said.
“That’s because we’ve raised a lot of cain in Ravenwood about his. I
pretty much told them if what happens last year, happens this year…
that after last year…. I said we are going to start calling some
people.” Keith said.
“They got my trees, they didn’t get my bees,” Larry said. “I stopped
and talked to the guy that was plowing there that day, ‘…oh yeah, we
saw you.’ I didn’t think I would hear from him. He gave me six hours.
I’ll take six. Six is better than nothing. Used up every sheet in the
house.”
Gerry said, “I asked ‘em about some pollinator plots you can plant and
I asked what they put in it and they said wildflowers. I said what
about sweet clover, do you have plenty of that in there? And they said
‘Oh no, that’s an invasive species, I don’t want to see any of that on
your farm.’ Well you better not look then. “
“I burned my bank off and seeded it with clover,” Keith said. “State
is going to be pretty upset.”
“You can plant it on private property, but they don’t want to see it
on CRP ground. I told ‘em beehives do best in the presence of sweet
clover. It is one of the best things for them. That is absolutely the
healthiest plant for bees … for feral bees, and even our managed bees,
are in trouble and we need to be doing things for them and not working
against them. Yellow blooms in June and white blooms in July.”
“What we need to do for tonight is we need to get organized for the
county fair, uh we are going to have a booth. It is the 18, 19, and
20. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We would like to have a banner
made with our name on it. If anybody has any suggestions on what we
should put on it, does anybody have any designs, is anybody an
artist?”
“Do we just want to say Northwest Missouri Beebusters and some sort of
logo because we really don’t have a logo.” Erin said.
“We are going to have to look up setting up some type of logo,” Dorene said.
“Somebody needs to help me here, because I don’t..” Keith said.
“My mom can do some of that because that is what she does, and do we
just want a bee or a beehive or do we have any ideas?” Erin asked.
“Something my mom brought up was making some type of a pamphlet with a
list of general honey facts and then a list of members who sell honey
and their general area and contact info so that people can take that
information with them and then if they want to buy honey they have the
information about who would be closest to them.”
“I can make a sign for each person and the name of what they sell
honey under. I am still checking to see if we can sell honey, I don’t
have a sale tax number and I don’t think we can.”
“I have a sales tax number,” Gerry said. “I got one for the house and
I got one for up here in case I sell at the farmer’s market. I formed
an LLC with my beekeeping this year, in case anybody sues me all they
can get is what’s in the LLC, Limited Liability Company, and I also
have a sales tax number and I will pay sales tax this year. A small
company like mine they were asking for statements quarterly, I told
Kevin and he fired a letter back and now it is yearly. If it is small
enough, you just have to pay yearly. So that is the way I am doing
it.”
“Something else we can look into is, I don’t know if they do this at
the fair, but at craft shows you can look into event sales tax
numbers.” Betty Grace threw in. “You just fill them out for the event
and I don’t know if they’ll do that for the fair or not, but you can
call the fair board and ask them, ‘Do you have event sales tax sheets
that we can use?’” Everybody agreed that was a good idea. Keith asked
Erin to check on that and she said she would.
Keith asked Gerald , “So you have to STATE where you are going to sell
honey at to get a sales tax number.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Gerald. “Kevin included the farmer’s market
as well as my home because he thought it was a good idea. I will
eventually have apples to sell and it will be included in Conception
Bee products.”
“What did that have to do with your LLC? That would just be your sales
tax,” said Keith. “do you have a federal id tax? Do you have a
separate bank account for it? ”
“Yes, just the sales tax.” agreed Gerald. “Well, I don’t know, Kevin
just thought it was a good idea and set everything up at once but I do
have a separate banking account for it.” Keith affirmed that it was
probably a federal id then.
“Returning to the fair booth, I brought these pictures here just for
talking points to put up,” Keith gestured to 3 framed pictures of bees
in different developments with different information on them. “This
one here gives you all the equipment that you need.”
Erin asked if the booth would be inside or outside. Keith and Dorene
affirmed that it would be outside.
“We have to give them a plan of what we are going to do, what we are
going to set up, whether we want it outside or inside,” said Byron,
“and then the park board has to approve that and then it is final.”
“Can we have a teaching hive as part of the display?” Dorene asked.
“Cindy Perkins has a teaching hive,” Keith remembered, “and we need to
contact her to see if we can use it for the display.”
“We could bring an empty hive, and a frame of honey set behind
plexiglass that people can see.” said Erin.
“Erin, is it all right if I put you in charge of this. Can you
organize it? The July meeting we cannot have here, we definitely need
to have it. Is it ok to have it at my house? The main thing we are
going to do is get organized and make sure we have enough people to
volunteer for the booth. “
“Another thing I want to bring up is taking a tour of Lynn Danzer’s
queen be yard. He is setting up to raise queens continuously using the
Nicot system between about June and August 1. So if anybody is
interested in taking a tour of the yard I can try to set up a date.
Because he works for UPS on third shift it would be easiest to set up
a time on the weekend, either Saturday or Sunday.” Dorene said.
Everybody thought Saturday would work the best.
“Is anybody interested in getting pollen?” asked Byron. Everybody
thought pollen was too much work for the $7 a day that it paid.
“In Japan,” Keith said, “they harvest the larvae, the brood, and put
them in cans labeled baby bees and consume it as food. It talks about
royal jelly, that it is very nutritious, that is very expensive, too.”
“So I need to talk to Rex Wallace about the fair booth, that is who
you’ve been talking to?” Erin asked Byron. He confirmed that.
“Would you ask Meagan to come up for the fair?” Keith asked Erin. Erin
indicated she would.
“We need to discuss setting up a meeting for Marion Ellis to come to.”
Dorene agreed to take charge of that.
Dorene said she had received a Minnesota Hygienic queen from Amy Weeks
in a different package. She had intended to bring the package to the
meeting that night but had just released the queen a couple of days
before and had not gotten back over there to reclaim the package.
Dorene also said the packages she received for her Kenyan top bar
hives had really taken off but she was having trouble with how they
were building comb off the bars. Both hives were full of brood but did
not contain any honey.
Keith said all his splits looked pretty good, they were in their
second boxes and they were also full of brood.
Byron said that if anybody needed honey he was almost out but could
obtain more. Larry said his was so thick that you couldn’t even pour
it out of the jar. He had tried heating it, Keith recommended that he
put water in it and Larry said he didn’t like the taste when he added
water. Erin said her dad had picked up an old metal incubator at a
farm auction for a little bit of nothing and when turned on its side
heated up the five gallon bucket of honey they had that had
crystallized. They were pretty pleased with it.
Keith wanted to know if anybody was having problems with their hives,
if there were any questions, had people been checking them to see if
there was brood?
Gerry said one of the packages he bought were making supercedure cells
already so they were already starting to think about replacing that
queen. Seemed to him like she was doing a pretty good job.
Keith said it was not unusual for that to happen. When he had first
started everybody told him to cut out the queen cells but he just has
a really hard time doing that. “I do a lot of looking before I destroy
a queen cell anymore.”
Keith asked Betty how her bees were doing and she said they were doing
well. She had handled them for the first time without gloves the
other day. Dorene said she had started handling hers without gloves,
too, she had been stung a couple of times. Keith asked her if she knew
about Byron’s trick of using baby powder on your hands when you
handled them. Byron always had a bottle of baby powder with him
because the bees don’t seem to sting you with the powder on your
hands. Dorene had never heard that before and neither had Betty. Keith
and Byron both agreed that it worked and kept them from stinging you.
Byron asked Dorene if she was going to bring a picture of that top bar
hive down to the county fair. People thought that would be interesting
and Dorene thought she would try to get some pictures of it. Gerry
Auffert announced that he had a top bar hive for sale very reasonable.
Keith asked everyone to start thinking about what they were going to
need for bottles so that we might be able to get a reduced price on a
quantity by making one order, just like we did on the packages this
year. People really like the honey bears. Keith said one of his
neighbors screws the cap on her honey bottle when it turns to sugar
and runs it through the top drawer of her dishwasher and that melts it
again. Everybody thought that was a clever idea. Not the bottom shelf
because the honey bottles can’t stand a lot of heat but on the top
shelf it seems to do pretty good.
Betty Grace asked about running ideas by for the banner because she
was interested in doing that.
Everyone was appreciative of her input.
Meeting ended about 8:45.
Gerry wanted to know if people had to inform you if they were spraying
insecticide around your bees. Byron said if Dougan couldn’t answer it,
he would. Keith Dougan deferred to Byron Miller.
Miller said, “If you have your bees registered they have to do so, but
if your bees are not registered, they don’t have to, they can spray
them anyhow.”
“How do you register your bees?” Dougan asked.
“Iowa does it over the internet,” Dorene Claybaker chipped in.
“Put them on your assessment sheet!” Byron informed him, “and if they
spray those bees they are paid for. They assess the personal property
tax of a hive of bees as $70, more than a cow.”
“I was not aware Missouri even had anything,” Keith said.
“How about if it drifts onto your property and kills your bees,” Gerry asked.
“It depends on how good a lawyer you got and how much B.S. you got.”
Byron said. “Helzer got his paid for. They killed his bees and they
sprayed right on top of them, but there is more people that have lost
than has gained.”
“They showed up on an ariel survey. You can see the beehives,” Gerry said.
“They know they are there,” Byron said. “But that don’t mean you’ve
registered them.” “No,” Gerry agreed.
Keith said, “But that is what they spray off of. I would think. So
they are sitting there looking at them and know they are there….”
“But if you don’t notify them, they are fine spraying them,” Byron
said. “The last time I lost bees I heard, I saw your bees down there
but I didn’t want to fool with ‘em, cuz I mighta got stung. I just
move my bees. “
Gerry said he thought he had turned his in on his assessment sheet
this year. Keith added that they had raised his property tax value
about $14,000. He asked Larry if he had been reassessed, and Larry
said he didn’t think so. Dorene added that she had also been
reassessed in Iowa and hers had gone up. Gerry said he hadn’t heard
anything about his.
“If land gets assessed at $6000 an acre that’s what you are going to
get assessed at,” Byron said.
“… and if land gets assessed at $2000, you’re still going to pay it,”
Larry added.
“You got so long to appeal that,” Byron said. “NOW I am just saying,”
as Keith shook his head, “the people that appeal it are going to win
and if you don’t appeal it you are going to get stuck, now that is
just what it amounts to.”
“The squeaky wheel gets greased,” Gerry said and Byron agreed.
“Larry got notified they were going to spray around his bee this year
and he had to go cover them,” Byron said.
“That’s because we’ve raised a lot of cain in Ravenwood about his. I
pretty much told them if what happens last year, happens this year…
that after last year…. I said we are going to start calling some
people.” Keith said.
“They got my trees, they didn’t get my bees,” Larry said. “I stopped
and talked to the guy that was plowing there that day, ‘…oh yeah, we
saw you.’ I didn’t think I would hear from him. He gave me six hours.
I’ll take six. Six is better than nothing. Used up every sheet in the
house.”
Gerry said, “I asked ‘em about some pollinator plots you can plant and
I asked what they put in it and they said wildflowers. I said what
about sweet clover, do you have plenty of that in there? And they said
‘Oh no, that’s an invasive species, I don’t want to see any of that on
your farm.’ Well you better not look then. “
“I burned my bank off and seeded it with clover,” Keith said. “State
is going to be pretty upset.”
“You can plant it on private property, but they don’t want to see it
on CRP ground. I told ‘em beehives do best in the presence of sweet
clover. It is one of the best things for them. That is absolutely the
healthiest plant for bees … for feral bees, and even our managed bees,
are in trouble and we need to be doing things for them and not working
against them. Yellow blooms in June and white blooms in July.”
“What we need to do for tonight is we need to get organized for the
county fair, uh we are going to have a booth. It is the 18, 19, and
20. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We would like to have a banner
made with our name on it. If anybody has any suggestions on what we
should put on it, does anybody have any designs, is anybody an
artist?”
“Do we just want to say Northwest Missouri Beebusters and some sort of
logo because we really don’t have a logo.” Erin said.
“We are going to have to look up setting up some type of logo,” Dorene said.
“Somebody needs to help me here, because I don’t..” Keith said.
“My mom can do some of that because that is what she does, and do we
just want a bee or a beehive or do we have any ideas?” Erin asked.
“Something my mom brought up was making some type of a pamphlet with a
list of general honey facts and then a list of members who sell honey
and their general area and contact info so that people can take that
information with them and then if they want to buy honey they have the
information about who would be closest to them.”
“I can make a sign for each person and the name of what they sell
honey under. I am still checking to see if we can sell honey, I don’t
have a sale tax number and I don’t think we can.”
“I have a sales tax number,” Gerry said. “I got one for the house and
I got one for up here in case I sell at the farmer’s market. I formed
an LLC with my beekeeping this year, in case anybody sues me all they
can get is what’s in the LLC, Limited Liability Company, and I also
have a sales tax number and I will pay sales tax this year. A small
company like mine they were asking for statements quarterly, I told
Kevin and he fired a letter back and now it is yearly. If it is small
enough, you just have to pay yearly. So that is the way I am doing
it.”
“Something else we can look into is, I don’t know if they do this at
the fair, but at craft shows you can look into event sales tax
numbers.” Betty Grace threw in. “You just fill them out for the event
and I don’t know if they’ll do that for the fair or not, but you can
call the fair board and ask them, ‘Do you have event sales tax sheets
that we can use?’” Everybody agreed that was a good idea. Keith asked
Erin to check on that and she said she would.
Keith asked Gerald , “So you have to STATE where you are going to sell
honey at to get a sales tax number.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Gerald. “Kevin included the farmer’s market
as well as my home because he thought it was a good idea. I will
eventually have apples to sell and it will be included in Conception
Bee products.”
“What did that have to do with your LLC? That would just be your sales
tax,” said Keith. “do you have a federal id tax? Do you have a
separate bank account for it? ”
“Yes, just the sales tax.” agreed Gerald. “Well, I don’t know, Kevin
just thought it was a good idea and set everything up at once but I do
have a separate banking account for it.” Keith affirmed that it was
probably a federal id then.
“Returning to the fair booth, I brought these pictures here just for
talking points to put up,” Keith gestured to 3 framed pictures of bees
in different developments with different information on them. “This
one here gives you all the equipment that you need.”
Erin asked if the booth would be inside or outside. Keith and Dorene
affirmed that it would be outside.
“We have to give them a plan of what we are going to do, what we are
going to set up, whether we want it outside or inside,” said Byron,
“and then the park board has to approve that and then it is final.”
“Can we have a teaching hive as part of the display?” Dorene asked.
“Cindy Perkins has a teaching hive,” Keith remembered, “and we need to
contact her to see if we can use it for the display.”
“We could bring an empty hive, and a frame of honey set behind
plexiglass that people can see.” said Erin.
“Erin, is it all right if I put you in charge of this. Can you
organize it? The July meeting we cannot have here, we definitely need
to have it. Is it ok to have it at my house? The main thing we are
going to do is get organized and make sure we have enough people to
volunteer for the booth. “
“Another thing I want to bring up is taking a tour of Lynn Danzer’s
queen be yard. He is setting up to raise queens continuously using the
Nicot system between about June and August 1. So if anybody is
interested in taking a tour of the yard I can try to set up a date.
Because he works for UPS on third shift it would be easiest to set up
a time on the weekend, either Saturday or Sunday.” Dorene said.
Everybody thought Saturday would work the best.
“Is anybody interested in getting pollen?” asked Byron. Everybody
thought pollen was too much work for the $7 a day that it paid.
“In Japan,” Keith said, “they harvest the larvae, the brood, and put
them in cans labeled baby bees and consume it as food. It talks about
royal jelly, that it is very nutritious, that is very expensive, too.”
“So I need to talk to Rex Wallace about the fair booth, that is who
you’ve been talking to?” Erin asked Byron. He confirmed that.
“Would you ask Meagan to come up for the fair?” Keith asked Erin. Erin
indicated she would.
“We need to discuss setting up a meeting for Marion Ellis to come to.”
Dorene agreed to take charge of that.
Dorene said she had received a Minnesota Hygienic queen from Amy Weeks
in a different package. She had intended to bring the package to the
meeting that night but had just released the queen a couple of days
before and had not gotten back over there to reclaim the package.
Dorene also said the packages she received for her Kenyan top bar
hives had really taken off but she was having trouble with how they
were building comb off the bars. Both hives were full of brood but did
not contain any honey.
Keith said all his splits looked pretty good, they were in their
second boxes and they were also full of brood.
Byron said that if anybody needed honey he was almost out but could
obtain more. Larry said his was so thick that you couldn’t even pour
it out of the jar. He had tried heating it, Keith recommended that he
put water in it and Larry said he didn’t like the taste when he added
water. Erin said her dad had picked up an old metal incubator at a
farm auction for a little bit of nothing and when turned on its side
heated up the five gallon bucket of honey they had that had
crystallized. They were pretty pleased with it.
Keith wanted to know if anybody was having problems with their hives,
if there were any questions, had people been checking them to see if
there was brood?
Gerry said one of the packages he bought were making supercedure cells
already so they were already starting to think about replacing that
queen. Seemed to him like she was doing a pretty good job.
Keith said it was not unusual for that to happen. When he had first
started everybody told him to cut out the queen cells but he just has
a really hard time doing that. “I do a lot of looking before I destroy
a queen cell anymore.”
Keith asked Betty how her bees were doing and she said they were doing
well. She had handled them for the first time without gloves the
other day. Dorene said she had started handling hers without gloves,
too, she had been stung a couple of times. Keith asked her if she knew
about Byron’s trick of using baby powder on your hands when you
handled them. Byron always had a bottle of baby powder with him
because the bees don’t seem to sting you with the powder on your
hands. Dorene had never heard that before and neither had Betty. Keith
and Byron both agreed that it worked and kept them from stinging you.
Byron asked Dorene if she was going to bring a picture of that top bar
hive down to the county fair. People thought that would be interesting
and Dorene thought she would try to get some pictures of it. Gerry
Auffert announced that he had a top bar hive for sale very reasonable.
Keith asked everyone to start thinking about what they were going to
need for bottles so that we might be able to get a reduced price on a
quantity by making one order, just like we did on the packages this
year. People really like the honey bears. Keith said one of his
neighbors screws the cap on her honey bottle when it turns to sugar
and runs it through the top drawer of her dishwasher and that melts it
again. Everybody thought that was a clever idea. Not the bottom shelf
because the honey bottles can’t stand a lot of heat but on the top
shelf it seems to do pretty good.
Betty Grace asked about running ideas by for the banner because she
was interested in doing that.
Everyone was appreciative of her input.
Meeting ended about 8:45.
The meeting on Monday, April 8 began at 7 o’clock with 20 people in
attendance. We began by discussing what strong packages we had
received on Saturday from Draper’s through Keith Dougan. Keith talked
about one new beekeeper who had went to release his queen and she flew
away. He had called Keith in a panic asking if they would be able to
make another queen. He learned that they wouldn’t. Keith ended up
giving him one of Miller’s queens and will locate another queen for
Miller. Keith had marked 9 queens for Kent Brown and he said that was
a lot of fun. Discussion of who was feeding bees and how much they
were eating and discussion of how different two packages of bees
could act.
We discussed the bees leaving the hive, yet it was full of honey.
Keith and several other people are wondering if the possible loss of
some of these hives are caused by queen loss. If you lose the queen
during the fall or winter they may be unable to make a new queen and
therefore don’t develop any new brood. Then the colony will disappear
as the current bees die off. Keith had examined some of his hives and
it looked like they had been trying to make a queen cell but were not
successful. Turned to a discussion of the current situation with our
hives. Keith noted that he had lost 6 of his 46 hives, Terry Goddard
had lost 1 of 2, and Kevin Helzer had only lost 1 of his 40. Keith
said some of the commercial growers had really been hit hard this year
losing 40% of their hives. They barely had enough bees to cover the
almond crop in California, They usually insisted that they have at
least 5 frames of bees to a hive but this year they had been taking
anything they could get to try to get by. It was noted that bees
around croplands like corn had been hit extremely hard, while the bees
around cherry and apple trees had not suffered quite as much. Keith
said he was really going to be watching where he set his bees this
year and they would not be going into cropland until the corn had been
planted.
Discussion turned to GMOs and Monsanto, who was treating with
chemicals and who wasn’t. Both Kevin Helzer and Mike Feuerbacher do
not feed and do not treat for mites and they had both been pretty
successful it had been heard. Feuerbacher believed the sugar water was
harmful to the bees. Keith reported that Dr. Ellis of Nebraska said
he had not found any beeswax at all that did not have chemicals
(pesticide, pollution) in it. Keith and Byron are trying to build a
protective cage to put around bees that are living on crop ground to
try to protect them from some of the effects of the chemicals.
Discussed the difference between 4.9 wax foundation and 5.2. Number
indicates the size of the hole in the foundation. Smaller size makes a
more compact bee and gives less room for the mite to attack the brood.
A smaller more compact bee results in tighter joints. Mites attack the
bees by starting in the brood cells and attacking the brood then
acting like a vampire and attacking them at their joints in the
exoskeleton.
Questions asked include:
Do you reverse your hive bodies, Keith? Keith: If I think I need to I
do. It’s a judgement call. If the bottom box is empty and all the
activity is above then I definitely reverse the hive bodies.
Is it too early for screened bottom boards? Yes.
To keep sugar water from going moldy add Honey-b-healthy.
Dorene brought up using poultry waterers to feed bees. She had put
rocks in hers to make the dish shallower so the bees wouldn’t drown.
She had considered using silicone to attach the rocks and hold them in
place but someone had suggested to her using sponges, which seemed
like a good idea. Melanie Fisher really liked that idea.
Gerry brought up his recipe for feeding saltwater to bees, the bees
really seem to like it. 1 tsp. salt to one gallon of water.
Meeting adjourned at 9:00 p.m. with a break in the middle for
cookies and beverages. Thanks to all who attended.
Meeting began about
7:00 with 17 members in attendance. Beginning
discussion was on Byron’s burning question of if a hive ever goes
broodless and stops laying completely. This discussion was caused by
the discovery of a very healthy hive that had no brood in it. Was it a
normal condition or had the hive lost the queen? Question tabled for
later discussion.
Jerry announced he had brought some of the black boxes for winter
insulation for hives if anyone was interested. They were $4 apiece and
are really worth the money. Then followed a discussion of different
ways people were insulating their hives for wintertime.
Keith introduced Pleasant Hill’s Brian Hargrave and family, Diane and
Ben, to the meeting as Keith’s partner and marketing manager. Byron
told one of his jokes then Erin arrived and we got ready for her
presentation on the Honey Revolution.
This topic was introduced to them at the state meeting by a retired
medical doctor , Dr. Ron Fessenden, who has dedicated his time to
researching honey and has written a couple of books on the subject.
They had 3 books on display that they had purchased there. Erin went
on to give a very interesting talk on the good effects of honey
especially on the liver and how it helps you sleep better at night. It
was a topic everyone was interested in. The doctor recommended getting
a local beekeeper to obtain your honey from because it is so hard to
determine if what you are buying in the store is actual honey. Keith
talked about how revolutionary this meeting was and how engrossed
people were in what the doctor was saying and that they actually
followed the doctor into book sales and most people bought the books
that he had available at the meeting. Keith said he was going to be
ordering some more of those books and Byron Miller suggested that we
make up a list of who wanted what books so Keith would know what to
order for us. Dorene Claybaker made up a list with Erin Mullins help
and passed it around , then turned it over to Keith.
Keith talked about the state meeting and most of it was pretty much
the same except for this guy with the honey revolution . Patrick
Mullins brought up that he had gone to a seminar where the guy would
find a swarm in a tree. He had attached a brood box to the opening to
force the bees to go through it in the hopes of laying eggs and
raising brood in the box. This would allow you to obtain a wild hive
with the feral strain without having to actually destroy the hive
inside of the tree. Pat thought that was interesting . Keith said
there was some research on swarms and Africanized bees, but while they
were interesting, they didn’t really apply to us. Erin had listened to
someone who had judged honey and went over each of the specific things
that a judge looks for when he judges honey. This was the second year
that Erin has entered honey in the state fair and she found him very
informative and helpful. Melanie Fisher asked if anyone had talked
about what was required on a lable and Keith said no, and then
explained what is required on the label: name, address, and weight.
We then went on to a further discussion of winterization and then
moved on to the honey tasting. Several people had brought current
year honey samples for tasting. It is surprising the variation you get
between two hives. We went on to a discussion of current treatments
for varroa and mite strips then we looked at a hive top feeder that
Gary built, he wasn’t sure he was going to build any more or not.
Melanie teasingly told him if you aren’t going to make them don’t show
them, because then we want one.
Byron brought up his question again of if it would be possible to keep
a hive going during the winter and what controls the dormancy of the
bees is it temperature, or amount of light during the day. Dorene
Claybaker said she had called the Omaha Bee Club president and he had
said that there was someone up there that had a greenhouse that kept
bees all winter and they didn’t go dormant.
Lazlo Fodor asked a question of how to hang on to extra honey, he has
two full broodboxes of honey and he doesn’t think the bees will use
all that honey. Leaving it in the hive for the bees was one way that
was brought up. Putting it in the freezer then getting it out to give
controlled feedings was also brought up.
Melanie Fisher asked how much honey was bringing and there was
discussion of that and it was resolved that most people were asking $5
a pound. Then followed a discussion of what sizes were selling the
best and Larry announced what he was getting for comb honey and
everybody thought he should be asking a little more than he was
because of the work involved in getting comb honey.
Discussion of how to get bees out of a tree, do not let the tree hit
the ground because if the combs slam into each other it will kill the
whole hive because the bees are smashed in between the comb.
Ended with Melanie Fisher presenting Gerry Auffurt with a wonderful
birthday cake of banana bread with a frosted bee on top as today was
Gerry’s birthday.
discussion was on Byron’s burning question of if a hive ever goes
broodless and stops laying completely. This discussion was caused by
the discovery of a very healthy hive that had no brood in it. Was it a
normal condition or had the hive lost the queen? Question tabled for
later discussion.
Jerry announced he had brought some of the black boxes for winter
insulation for hives if anyone was interested. They were $4 apiece and
are really worth the money. Then followed a discussion of different
ways people were insulating their hives for wintertime.
Keith introduced Pleasant Hill’s Brian Hargrave and family, Diane and
Ben, to the meeting as Keith’s partner and marketing manager. Byron
told one of his jokes then Erin arrived and we got ready for her
presentation on the Honey Revolution.
This topic was introduced to them at the state meeting by a retired
medical doctor , Dr. Ron Fessenden, who has dedicated his time to
researching honey and has written a couple of books on the subject.
They had 3 books on display that they had purchased there. Erin went
on to give a very interesting talk on the good effects of honey
especially on the liver and how it helps you sleep better at night. It
was a topic everyone was interested in. The doctor recommended getting
a local beekeeper to obtain your honey from because it is so hard to
determine if what you are buying in the store is actual honey. Keith
talked about how revolutionary this meeting was and how engrossed
people were in what the doctor was saying and that they actually
followed the doctor into book sales and most people bought the books
that he had available at the meeting. Keith said he was going to be
ordering some more of those books and Byron Miller suggested that we
make up a list of who wanted what books so Keith would know what to
order for us. Dorene Claybaker made up a list with Erin Mullins help
and passed it around , then turned it over to Keith.
Keith talked about the state meeting and most of it was pretty much
the same except for this guy with the honey revolution . Patrick
Mullins brought up that he had gone to a seminar where the guy would
find a swarm in a tree. He had attached a brood box to the opening to
force the bees to go through it in the hopes of laying eggs and
raising brood in the box. This would allow you to obtain a wild hive
with the feral strain without having to actually destroy the hive
inside of the tree. Pat thought that was interesting . Keith said
there was some research on swarms and Africanized bees, but while they
were interesting, they didn’t really apply to us. Erin had listened to
someone who had judged honey and went over each of the specific things
that a judge looks for when he judges honey. This was the second year
that Erin has entered honey in the state fair and she found him very
informative and helpful. Melanie Fisher asked if anyone had talked
about what was required on a lable and Keith said no, and then
explained what is required on the label: name, address, and weight.
We then went on to a further discussion of winterization and then
moved on to the honey tasting. Several people had brought current
year honey samples for tasting. It is surprising the variation you get
between two hives. We went on to a discussion of current treatments
for varroa and mite strips then we looked at a hive top feeder that
Gary built, he wasn’t sure he was going to build any more or not.
Melanie teasingly told him if you aren’t going to make them don’t show
them, because then we want one.
Byron brought up his question again of if it would be possible to keep
a hive going during the winter and what controls the dormancy of the
bees is it temperature, or amount of light during the day. Dorene
Claybaker said she had called the Omaha Bee Club president and he had
said that there was someone up there that had a greenhouse that kept
bees all winter and they didn’t go dormant.
Lazlo Fodor asked a question of how to hang on to extra honey, he has
two full broodboxes of honey and he doesn’t think the bees will use
all that honey. Leaving it in the hive for the bees was one way that
was brought up. Putting it in the freezer then getting it out to give
controlled feedings was also brought up.
Melanie Fisher asked how much honey was bringing and there was
discussion of that and it was resolved that most people were asking $5
a pound. Then followed a discussion of what sizes were selling the
best and Larry announced what he was getting for comb honey and
everybody thought he should be asking a little more than he was
because of the work involved in getting comb honey.
Discussion of how to get bees out of a tree, do not let the tree hit
the ground because if the combs slam into each other it will kill the
whole hive because the bees are smashed in between the comb.
Ended with Melanie Fisher presenting Gerry Auffurt with a wonderful
birthday cake of banana bread with a frosted bee on top as today was
Gerry’s birthday.
September 10, 2012
Meeting started at 6:50 with 12 members in attendance.
Kent Brown and Keith Dougan had a discussion of an experimental top
board that Keith had made that was composed of open slats. Keith said
he had trouble with the bees filling it all the way and Gerald said he
hadn’t noticed anything but all his comb in the hive was already drawn
out. He had not used them over a new hive. Keith said they left the
corners open.
Discussion turned to who was extracting and if people were going to
put the supers back on to be cleaned up by the bees after extracting.
Keith said he wasn’t this year, Jerry said Daniel Fry didn’t clean his
up believing that the bees started working it better if they weren’t
cleaned up. Abe Yoder said he got moths if ** he cleaned them up?**
We took a brief recess to check out Melanie Fisher’s experimental hive
where the bees had built the comb diagonally across the bars because
she didn’t use foundation comb in the hive but still used the frames.
Kevin Helzer doesn’t use foundation either but for some reason his
bees don’t seem to have this problem. Melanie also displayed how to
put Apigard into a hive.
Keith brought up we need to be thinking about winterizing your hives
and treating for varroa. Checking for small hive beetles and treating
the ground around the hive with mineral salts if you find any. Abe
Yoder said he has seen some hive beetles in his hives but Gerald said
he thought they were mainly confined to the southeast states. Gerald
was very startled to hear that Abe had seen some in his hives. There
followed a very intense conversation about what the beetle looked like
and if Abe was sure it as a small hive beetle.
Gerald then gave a short presentation on the small hive beetle.
Discussion turned to filtering honey that then turned into a longer
discussion on how to filter the wax and try to get most of the yellow
color out. Assignment to members to try to research filtering methods
and how this is done for beeswax candles.
Byron Miller brought up the State Bee meeting in Kansas City between
the 24-27. The 24th and 25th are taken care of but they are looking
for volunteers for the 26th and 27th. The State meeting for October
is also in Kansas City and is on the 26th and 27th. Kent Brown then
brought up something he felt was very important. Anaphylactic shock
does not necessarily have to be difficulty breathing. His father had a
reaction that appeared like a stroke. Symptoms appeared very shortly
after he was stung on the ear. He immediately announced that he was
feeling well and had to sit down. After sitting he immediately passed
out and started drooling and mumbling. Because he is 80 years old they
immediately suspected a stroke and didn’t suspect anaphylactic shock
and didn’t treat with an epi-pen. It was a very learning experience.
The medical team told them to go ahead and treat with an epi-pen if
any reactions suddenly occur after a bee sting because it may be an
allergic reaction. So even if you suspect a heart attack or stroke, go
ahead and treat with an epi-pen just in case because it will not hurt
and may help.
Discussion of what you charge someone to have your bees pollinate
their crops. Kent Brown had someone approach him about pollinating 27
acres of blueberries. Consulted the current issue of Bee Culture
magazine (which we had on hand thanks to Jerry Auffert) and for our
area it was $75 a hive for the season.
Meeting wrapped up about 9 o’clock with lingering discussion groups.
June 11, 2012
The meeting started at 7:00 p.m. with 14 members in attendance
including a couple of first timers.
Keith is really into checking and being aware of varroa mites in your
colonies. He was wanting everyone to check. He passed out a lot of
information that he obtained over the internet.
Jerry brought up a new all natural product that he is really excited
about called Hop Guard. It uses the hops plant that is used in beer
making and said he is going to try that this year.
Gerry was asked about eradicating the drone brood. He had been going
to insert plastic drone brood frames in his hives and then eliminate
them but he said he had not gotten around to that. Varroa mites attack
drone brood more due to the longer gestation time and the larger size
of the bee. They can reproduce quite rapidly on drone brood.
Dorene Claybaker brought up the gmail address and asked for Keith’s
help in trying to answer some of the questions that she didn’t feel
competent in answering.
Keith brought up over wintering nucs and trying to do your splits in
the fall instead of the spring in order to give the colonies a faster
ramp up time in the spring. It was a new idea and we discussed it.
Keith brought up on selling honey you have got to sell by the pound
and the state can come in and weight it and make sure that you are
selling correct weight. Sales tax is required to be turned in if you
are selling hone.
Any one selling under $30,000 are considered a hobbyist.
Keith also had internet information on different types of honey that
could be made (like creamed honey) that he passed out.
Gerry had opened a hive and was excited to note that they heard the
sound of a queenless hive. It was a different sound and he now knows
it. They plan on requeening that hive.
Keith is helping his granddaughter build an observation hive as a 4-H
project and he had it on display.
We had hoped Meagan Allan would be here for a presentation but she was
unable to attend so we had a bit more discussion time and the meeting
wrapped up a little earlier than it might have.
We discussed over wintering hives and the fact that moisture kills
more bees than the cold does.
Talked about how people were doing with swarms this year.
Dorene Claybaker moved to adjourn the meeting about 8:25. Meeting adjourned.
The meeting started at 7:00 p.m. with 14 members in attendance
including a couple of first timers.
Keith is really into checking and being aware of varroa mites in your
colonies. He was wanting everyone to check. He passed out a lot of
information that he obtained over the internet.
Jerry brought up a new all natural product that he is really excited
about called Hop Guard. It uses the hops plant that is used in beer
making and said he is going to try that this year.
Gerry was asked about eradicating the drone brood. He had been going
to insert plastic drone brood frames in his hives and then eliminate
them but he said he had not gotten around to that. Varroa mites attack
drone brood more due to the longer gestation time and the larger size
of the bee. They can reproduce quite rapidly on drone brood.
Dorene Claybaker brought up the gmail address and asked for Keith’s
help in trying to answer some of the questions that she didn’t feel
competent in answering.
Keith brought up over wintering nucs and trying to do your splits in
the fall instead of the spring in order to give the colonies a faster
ramp up time in the spring. It was a new idea and we discussed it.
Keith brought up on selling honey you have got to sell by the pound
and the state can come in and weight it and make sure that you are
selling correct weight. Sales tax is required to be turned in if you
are selling hone.
Any one selling under $30,000 are considered a hobbyist.
Keith also had internet information on different types of honey that
could be made (like creamed honey) that he passed out.
Gerry had opened a hive and was excited to note that they heard the
sound of a queenless hive. It was a different sound and he now knows
it. They plan on requeening that hive.
Keith is helping his granddaughter build an observation hive as a 4-H
project and he had it on display.
We had hoped Meagan Allan would be here for a presentation but she was
unable to attend so we had a bit more discussion time and the meeting
wrapped up a little earlier than it might have.
We discussed over wintering hives and the fact that moisture kills
more bees than the cold does.
Talked about how people were doing with swarms this year.
Dorene Claybaker moved to adjourn the meeting about 8:25. Meeting adjourned.
Monday, May 14, 2012
We met at 7:00 p.m. with 17 people in attendance and went straight
into discussion.
A question was brought up about an extremely active hive and
controlling swarming from a very active hives. Keith Dougan said he
placed an empty hive body with frames in between the two full hive
bodies and he had been having good luck with that.
Byron Miller brought up about a new technique he had learned called
'milking' hives. The commercial growers destroy the drones by cutting
them out of the frames because the drones are not useful to the hive.
It's called milking because of the 'milk' that comes from the
destroyed drone brood.
Melanie Fisher brought up how a woman in St. Joe does her frames by
cutting the wax foundation in half and installing it in the frame and
letting the bees finish filling the frame with comb. Discussion moved
to the alternate top bar hive and how the bees build comb off of an
extended strip of wood.
Keith asked if everyone had their bees. One person did not but said he
was getting a nuc from Draper's. We discussed that it was unusually
late to be getting bees from Draper's. He decided he would check with
Draper's and Keith said he would sell him a nuc if he needed it.
There was a discussion of moisture in honey and how you can control
it. Capped honey is usually at the correct moisture content. Keith
said he extracted very shortly after pulling the frames from the hive
because as the set they can pull moisture.
Conversation turned to the current price of honey and if the everyone
in the group was going to agree to sell at the same price. It was
calculated that the going rate for a 5 gallon bucket was $160.
Keith asked if anyone was interested in feeding corn syrup. Melanie
Fisher brought up that she wasn't because of the possibility of GMO
corn, but there were a couple of other people interested and they
decided to look into the possibility of a couple of people going in
together.
We then discussed marking queens and Byron Miller showed us his new
tool to do that. It allows you to pin the queen on the frame, or to
corral her separately and then hold her in place and mark her with a
bee specific paint pen. Queens are marked with standardized different
colors depending on the last number of the year so you can tell if you
how old the queen working a hive is. Very handy if you have many
hives. Standard color for this year, 2012, is yellow.
We then discussed pollen traps and how you collect pollen. Byron
Miller has started collecting pollen this year and had a pollen trap
with him to show people who were interested.
Meeting was adjourned at 9:00 p.m. with some lingering discussion groups.
We met at 7:00 p.m. with 17 people in attendance and went straight
into discussion.
A question was brought up about an extremely active hive and
controlling swarming from a very active hives. Keith Dougan said he
placed an empty hive body with frames in between the two full hive
bodies and he had been having good luck with that.
Byron Miller brought up about a new technique he had learned called
'milking' hives. The commercial growers destroy the drones by cutting
them out of the frames because the drones are not useful to the hive.
It's called milking because of the 'milk' that comes from the
destroyed drone brood.
Melanie Fisher brought up how a woman in St. Joe does her frames by
cutting the wax foundation in half and installing it in the frame and
letting the bees finish filling the frame with comb. Discussion moved
to the alternate top bar hive and how the bees build comb off of an
extended strip of wood.
Keith asked if everyone had their bees. One person did not but said he
was getting a nuc from Draper's. We discussed that it was unusually
late to be getting bees from Draper's. He decided he would check with
Draper's and Keith said he would sell him a nuc if he needed it.
There was a discussion of moisture in honey and how you can control
it. Capped honey is usually at the correct moisture content. Keith
said he extracted very shortly after pulling the frames from the hive
because as the set they can pull moisture.
Conversation turned to the current price of honey and if the everyone
in the group was going to agree to sell at the same price. It was
calculated that the going rate for a 5 gallon bucket was $160.
Keith asked if anyone was interested in feeding corn syrup. Melanie
Fisher brought up that she wasn't because of the possibility of GMO
corn, but there were a couple of other people interested and they
decided to look into the possibility of a couple of people going in
together.
We then discussed marking queens and Byron Miller showed us his new
tool to do that. It allows you to pin the queen on the frame, or to
corral her separately and then hold her in place and mark her with a
bee specific paint pen. Queens are marked with standardized different
colors depending on the last number of the year so you can tell if you
how old the queen working a hive is. Very handy if you have many
hives. Standard color for this year, 2012, is yellow.
We then discussed pollen traps and how you collect pollen. Byron
Miller has started collecting pollen this year and had a pollen trap
with him to show people who were interested.
Meeting was adjourned at 9:00 p.m. with some lingering discussion groups.
Monday, April 9, 2012
There were approximately 17 people
in attendance and we welcomed a couple of new beekeepers from the St. Joseph
area.
Keith did a presentation of how he installs package
bees into a Langstroth Hive and he also showed examples of covered brood and
larvae. Keith also brought out a frame with a wonderful example of 2
supercedure queen cells. When a hive decides that a queen is losing fertility
it builds queen supercedure cells differently than the swarm queens it creates
when it is simply expanding into another hive. This is a sign that the current
queen needs replaced and the beekeeper can either let nature take its course or
buy another queen from a known distributor and requeen the hive himself.
We then had open floor discussion on feeding bees,
some questions about using hive reducers and then the meeting moved outside to
hands on examples in Keith's bee yard.
Dorene Claybaker
Secretary
Monday, March 12, 2012
There were 12 members in attendance. Keith Dougan, Dorene
Claybaker,
Byron Miller, Erin Mullin, Meagan Allen, Mendy Allen,
Cynthia Perkins,
Melanie Fisher, Gerald Auffert, Sweeney Stoopes, Larry
Hagar, Abe Yoder.
We discussed how good high pollen count is for the bees,
while some people might not like it for health reason it does give the bees
something to collect. Everybody is looking for a large amount of swarming this
year and we need to look into swarm control for our own hives to discourage
them from swarming. Gerry Auffert gave a presentation on swarm control. His
link for the site is:
http:www.twickenham-bees.org.uk/tedstip-demaree.html Gerry
recommended reversing the hive bodies and adding in a lot of supers to give the
bees a lot of expansion room so they wouldn’t feel crowded. We then had a
discussion of different types of chemical treatments that were being used and
by whom at this time.
Mendy and Meagan Allen and Erin Mullins all attended the
last State beekeepers meeting in St. Louis and discussed some of the things
they learned and some of the speakers they heard. They also brought up that the
next Sate meeting will be held in Kansas City.
We also agreed that we needed to hold a meeting the second
Monday in April at 7 p.m. at Keith Dougan’s house.
We then went around and did a basic introduction so that
all the members can start associating names with faces a little better.
Dorene Claybaker also brought up the meeting this coming
Sunday March 18, of the Omaha Bee Club at 1:00 p.m. to inquire if anyone else
was interested in attending to contact her.
Meeting adjourned with an agreement to meet in April.
Thank you for posting the minutes from the meetings. They were very interesting reads.
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