BeeKind March 2004 Volume 2 Number 4 The Quarterly Newsletter of the Clatsop County Beekeepers Association By Thom Trusewicz It s funny how things change with time and experience. When I first got into beekeeping I read all the books and intellectually understood what all those books were telling me, but without experience I constantly caught myself second guessing any issue that came up with my hives. One thing time and experience has taught me is that I should not sweat the small stuff. During my first winter with bees I would go out every week or so and lift the boxes to see how much honey was left. This year I totally ignored my bees. There was a nice sunny day last week, and I saw one of my bees flying around and I thought to myself, looks like at least one bee made it through the winter. Yes, it all sound so cavalier, but I m really not concerned. Not because I don t care about my bees. I do care about them, I just don t care to fret over them. As a beekeeper I know I did everything right to prepare my bees for the winter. They were medicated properly. They had enough honey stored up to last them the winter. Honey bees have been surviving winters in the United States for threehundred years. They survive winters inside damp hollowed out trees, they survived inside cramped walls of houses. I have confidence that my bees will survive in their nine-frame two story houses that are well ventilated. That s what they do. Things don t normally go wrong with a healthy hive that has enough food for the winter. Last year I did a survey that many OSBA members participated in. Of the beekeepers that had winter losses, each one of them knew why their bees died. They died from causes across the board, starvation, queenless, mites, nosema. The important thing is that the beekeeper in each instance knew what the trouble was. I have a hive that I knew wouldn t survive the winter. I knew this in October. It was a late swarm hive that was queenless. Without direction they never built up enough food stores. I could have joined them to another hive, but that would have taxed another hive s resources to the point where I would now have two dead hives. I let nature take its course. As beekeepers it is important to manage your bees as best as you can, but realize that heroics rarely pay off. What could I have done in October to save that hive? I could have gotten a queen from Hawaii, moved the hive into my greenhouse and fed the bees all winter. I could have spent $50 + dollars for the queen and shipping and medicine and sugar for a hive that I can replace in the spring for $35 or less if I do my own splits. Beekeeping has a practical side that can t be ignored. The longer you keep bees the more you will see the practical side, and the more you will be relaxed about letting nature have its way. 1
Good Swarm Bad Swarm Most beekeepers seem to be delighted when they capture a swarm that came from one of their own hives. One thing that really left an impression at the Fall Conference was when one of the speakers said that there is no better sign of failure as a beekeeper than having a hive swarm. When your bees swarm you have lost control of your bee yard. It is really true. Had you requeened early enough, reversed the boxes, made spring splits, and kept an eye on the brood you would not have a swarming problem. So you might say, My colony was strong and they split into two, now I have two hives, what s wrong with that? Plenty! The time to split a colony is March, most swarms start in late April or May. It s a math thing and one that many beekeepers overlook. The magic number in the beekeeping world is 40. When a queen lays a worker egg, the worker will not emerge as an adult bee for twenty-one days. This worker then spends the next nineteen days working inside the hive. It is 40 days from the day the egg is laid when that bee takes her first flight to bring nectar back to the hive. If you split your hive on March 15, all the eggs that your two queens laid on that day will start foraging before the end of April. By mid May when the nectar flow starts you should have a strong colony of foragers built up. Now let s say your hive swarms on May 1 st, (remember the saying a swarm in May is worth a truck of hay?) well the first new forager from that swarm doesn t start foraging until the second week of June. In some areas that is the peak of the nectar flow. By the time you have enough foragers to bring home the nectar, the nectar flow is over. So now you have a big late buildup that is not effective in bringing in the quantity of food that is needed to sustain the colony. In other words the parent colony and the swarm colony will fail to give you any surplus honey in quantities that would make it worth your while keeping those bees. In the old days when the beekeepers robbed all the honey from the hives and let their bees die, a swarm in May could have been worth a truck of hay, and a swarm in June could have been worth a silver spoon, And a swarm in July wasn t then and still isn t worth a fly. In an earlier edition I wrote about letting some swarms go feral. This is what you should do if you get a swarm call in July. Anything else is heroic and for the most part doomed. If you must save a late swarm because you can t stand letting nature take its course, the only thing to do is to find the swarm queen and remove her and join the bees up with a strong hive. It is an easy task, but remember you can t just dump them in a hive with other bees. The way to join them is to remove the top of a hive and replace the top with a sheet of newspaper, place a box (make sure there is a vent hole in the box) with 10 frames on top of the paper, add the swarm (without the queen) and put the cover on the top box. After a couple days the bees will eat away the paper from both sides, and hopefully by that time they will be used to each other. 2
Water For Your Bees By Terrie Powers This past summer, because of the heat and dry weather, our bees made nuisances of themselves by taking over the birdbaths and several fountains we have in our yard. They especially seemed to like a particular fountain where the water runs down the sides of a square column in a zig-zag pattern. These sides accumulate algae growth and the bees were drawn to it like bees to honey, so to speak. I recently found an old out-ofprint book that I have been searching for called The Beekeeper s Garden and it had a suggested solution that we re going to try next year. I thought I would share it since it seemed like a great fix and addition to the bee yard. This might be all old hat for the experienced beekeepers in our group but newbees like us might be interested. Honey bees require a lot of water throughout the year, except when a nectar flow is in progress, when they have a surplus which has to be evaporated off. They need the water to add to the stored honey so that they can eat it and, in very hot weather, to cool the brood in the hive. They prefer to take the water from places where it is in small quantity and can warm up, and seem to prefer dirty water to clean. (Our fountain is perfect as are the birdbaths!) Probably the best (source) is a drum of water with a tap or a small hole, which can dribble onto a sloping board with a herring-bone arrangement of slats to guide the water. (EXACTLY like the popular fountain!) Bees can be enticed to use it by filling the drum with a very weak sugar solution, but once they have found it plain water is sufficient. If you can encourage moss to grow on the board the system will be more efficient in holding the water. A trick I learned from bonsai to grow moss is to mix some moss with water and a little buttermilk and pour this on the surface that you want the moss to grow on. Works great. We ll let you all know how this works - meanwhile, here is the diagram to build one. Round and Round We Go The last edition of this newsletter had an article about our new Internet Message Board. This message board was through the Microsoft Network, and frankly we had a lot of problems with it. Members couldn t log on, sometimes messages would take days to post It was a mess, so I went searching for a new board that was easy to use and I found one. I created a board for our Clatsop County Chapter and I created one for the OSBA. There are different posts on each board so please check them both out. To get on our board go to orsba.org, click on the button for (Continued on next page) 3
branches. Under the Clatsop County Branch you will see a note directing you to click here to join the discussion group or read our newsletters. Click that link and that opens our Clatsop page, then scroll down and click on the message board link. Please pop in and let us know what s on your mind. To get on the OSBA Message Board, follow the link from the main page or from the News page. Both ours and the OSBA boards are lively. Even if you don t want to post, feel free to read all the messages. Some are pretty funny. Tillamook Beeschool There was a beeschool in Tillamook at the Forestry Center on February 20. It was attended by several long time members of the Tillamook group and by six or so new members. Membership came with the price of admission. This was the first time for me doing a full bee class with the slide presentation. After spending months putting the slide presentation together I still find myself impressed with the images in the show. Since the Tillamook session I ve added another 50 slides to the presentation. Who knows how big it will be by the time of the Clatsop beeschool. Happy Birthday Norm! Norm Counterman of Countermanbees USA will celebrating his 76 th birthday on April 1. What a long strange trip it s been. You are an inspiration to all of us. Keep up the good work, and take the day off, will you? Master Gardeners Our association with the Clatsop County Master Gardeners continues into yet another year. Some of our beekeepers are taking the Master Gardener class and this year we will have some Master Gardeners taking our Beekeeping class. Last year the crossover started with Dion and Charlotte. Though this edition will print before we can review our beekeeping class roster, I have spoken to several Master Gardener couples who plan to attend our class. The events we need to prepare for are the KMUN Plant Sale, which always takes place around Mother s Day, Astoria Sunday Market, which starts on Mother s Day and the Clatsop County Fair, which will happen at the end of July. If you find any other event that is in need of some beekeepers please let us know. CONTACT If you need to contact anyone from the Clatsop County Beekeeping Association: Co-Presidents,Terrie and Rick Powers can be reached via e-mail at galleyho@willapabay.org Vice President, John Schmidt can be reached by e-mail at nvbee@intergate.com Treasurer and Newsletter Editor, Thom Trusewicz can be reached by e-mail at ccbee@intergate.com or by phone at 503-325-7966 Let us know what we can do for you. 4
Plan Ahead For CCBA As the Clatsop County Beekeepers Association enters its third year of operation this June, we can look back on many accomplishments. Our group has done a lot to educate the public on issues of apiculture. We ve had a good time presenting the information to the masses. As a member of this organization, you should be proud to be a part of it all. As a group we have a very good name with the state beekeeping association. We are on the map. I am often asked what makes our association better than most. Frankly, the answer to that is energy. It is the energy of those members who participate in our meetings and activities that push us over the top. We are on the verge of getting many new members from our Beeschool. Hopefully many of them will want to participate in our organization. Too often people think that they have done enough by paying their membership dues, but in order for this association to thrive in the future we need people who are willing to do just a little more. There will be an election of new officers next fall. Consider holding office. It s not as difficult as you might think, and it isn t very demanding of your time. We will need a new President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Newsletter Editor. If this seems too much for you maybe you could so something like be the point person to arrange volunteers for the County Fair or Sunday Market. It s about community. You are the beekeeping community, and if you have benefited from our association it is only fair that help so others may benefit. Changes to our Constitution and Bylaws We recently made some changes to the way our association does business. We raised the dues, however those attending Beeschool this year will join at the old rate. The new rate is $6 for individuals under 18 years of age, $12 for adult individuals, and $18 for a family membership. Also dues will be renewed in February of every year. We will no longer have membership anniversaries of the date you joined. Elections will be held in November with the new officers taking office January 1. There Will be a Bee Day in Colton! I just got word from the Portland Branch that they will be holding a Bee Day at George Hansen s Foothills Honey Farm 30576 S Oswalt Rd Colton, Oregon on Saturday April 3. Pre-registration is suggested because lunch is one of the activities and they would like to have an idea of how many lunches will be needed. Registration is $10 in advance or $12 the day of the event. Bring your own bee gear, veils, gloves, etc. Registration is at 9:30am with presentations starting at 10am and running until 3:00pm. Each presentation will last for around 45 minutes. Bee Day is a must for all who are interested in beekeeping, no matter your experience level. It is a good opportunity to meet other beekeepers from around the state. For more information visit the Events page at orsba.org. 5
Past The Deadline When this Newsletter first came out three years ago, I was going to do it on a monthly basis. I am so happy I listened to Justin Williams who told me that unless I had a lot of contributors I should do only a quarterly newsletter. Back then I was happy writing beekeeping articles. I could write them all day, every day. However now it s hard to find the time and the words to fill this letter every three months. I wanted to delay this edition so I could write about the Astoria Beeschool, but then I thought it would be nice to hand all the new members their first copy. So here it is, a week before the class. I am excited by the prospect of all the new beekeepers we will have in this county next month. I m excited by all the lessons they will learn. I am truly happy to have learned so many beekeeping lessons, and to have experienced all that I have by being a beekeeper over the past few years, but I would love to go back to the feeling of pure fascination I had when I first started. It was a time when the puzzle of many pieces was coming together and I was getting glimpses of the picture as each piece slipped into place. For me there are still some pieces that need to be found and placed. Hopefully I will not personally finish this beekeeping puzzle. Each year I would like to try new ideas and old ideas. In this journal I will continue to report on my successes and failures, and I hope others in our group will use this newsletter as their forum as well. In closing let me just say WELCOME to the Astoria Beekeeping class of 2004. Clatsop County Beekeepers Association OSU Extension Service 2001 Marine Drive, Ste 210 Astoria Or 97103 6