Julia and I have been working really hard on the meeting committee to plan to the GBA fall conference on September 18 and 19 in Milledgeville, Georgia. We are thrilled with our speaker line-up. Michael Bush is coming as well as Dewey Caron and even Dean Stiglitz and Laurie Herboldsheimer, authors of the Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping.
Below you'll find the latest issue of Spilling the Honey - the GBA newsletter that I edit with Gina Gallucci. All the details of our fall conference, the main speakers, the breakouts, the honey show, etc. can be found there.
Please plan to come - we will be glad to see you!
Showing posts with label spilling the honey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spilling the honey. Show all posts
Monday, August 03, 2015
Thursday, January 01, 2015
Happy New Year and Hope it's a good Bee Year
I'm rather glad to see the beginning of a new year - while it does make me older and older, I am glad to shut the door on 2014. I had a hard beekeeping year in 2014. I had an injured leg for most of the year, falling on Christmas day, 2013, and in a cast for much of the summer. My bee season activities were limited and especially my early spring start up was limited by my injury.
Now I am all better - it was a one year-to-heal injury and indeed took until Christmas 2014 to be fully better.
In addition, I had my kitchen in my tiny house redone over the summer and that too interfered with my beekeeping because it was just so hard to get to the hives.
So in my back yard are some dead hives and some obviously live ones. Two of the liveliest hives are a split that I made from a swarm hive and a hive that is two years old from a swarm near Northlake mall. My third active and interesting hive is one that I never consolidated going into winter. I also didn't harvest from it. As a result it is still six or seven boxes tall. Maybe it seems like a tree to the bees who are living there. We'll see if they make it all the way through the winter. And there are some others still living and hopefully hanging on until spring.
This year 2015, I am hoping to use my queen castle that I bought last year and was then unable to use. I am hoping to keep my sights smaller and focus more on my home hives than expanding.
My hive at Chastain died mid summer - not unlikely from the poison that is used at the Chastain Conservancy - Roundup was sprayed within feet of our hives there. I don't plan to replace that hive.
I have live bees in Rabun County, in my backyard, at the Morningside community garden (I hope they are alive), at my friend Tom's house, and at the Inn. I am not expanding this coming year and will focus on whatever hives make it through the winter.
So I am planning to be a focused and intense beekeeper this year, 2015. I plan to put lots of energy into the state bee club where the leadership is extremely positive and supportive. My friend Julia and I are in charge of the "spring" meeting in February this year and we are setting up what purports to be a great conference. And my friend Gina and I edit the newsletter for GBA (Spilling the Honey). I love working on that with Gina and will continue to do that in the next year.
So my bee resolutions for 2015 are:
1. To be the best beekeeper I can be
2. To focus on quality and not on quantity for both bee hive numbers and honey production
3. To put out (with Gina) the best state newsletter possible
4. To support the Georgia Beekeepers Association in every way I can
5. To help new beekeepers to get started in whatever way I find to do so.
Now I am all better - it was a one year-to-heal injury and indeed took until Christmas 2014 to be fully better.
In addition, I had my kitchen in my tiny house redone over the summer and that too interfered with my beekeeping because it was just so hard to get to the hives.
So in my back yard are some dead hives and some obviously live ones. Two of the liveliest hives are a split that I made from a swarm hive and a hive that is two years old from a swarm near Northlake mall. My third active and interesting hive is one that I never consolidated going into winter. I also didn't harvest from it. As a result it is still six or seven boxes tall. Maybe it seems like a tree to the bees who are living there. We'll see if they make it all the way through the winter. And there are some others still living and hopefully hanging on until spring.
This year 2015, I am hoping to use my queen castle that I bought last year and was then unable to use. I am hoping to keep my sights smaller and focus more on my home hives than expanding.
My hive at Chastain died mid summer - not unlikely from the poison that is used at the Chastain Conservancy - Roundup was sprayed within feet of our hives there. I don't plan to replace that hive.
I have live bees in Rabun County, in my backyard, at the Morningside community garden (I hope they are alive), at my friend Tom's house, and at the Inn. I am not expanding this coming year and will focus on whatever hives make it through the winter.
So I am planning to be a focused and intense beekeeper this year, 2015. I plan to put lots of energy into the state bee club where the leadership is extremely positive and supportive. My friend Julia and I are in charge of the "spring" meeting in February this year and we are setting up what purports to be a great conference. And my friend Gina and I edit the newsletter for GBA (Spilling the Honey). I love working on that with Gina and will continue to do that in the next year.
So my bee resolutions for 2015 are:
1. To be the best beekeeper I can be
2. To focus on quality and not on quantity for both bee hive numbers and honey production
3. To put out (with Gina) the best state newsletter possible
4. To support the Georgia Beekeepers Association in every way I can
5. To help new beekeepers to get started in whatever way I find to do so.
Happy New Year to all my Beekeeping Friends and Readers!
Hope you have the best bee year ever.....
Monday, February 10, 2014
Jamie Ellis at GBA
Jamie Ellis' presence at the GBA Spring meeting was absolutely delightful. The researchers at UGA tend to be telling us something different every time we see them. Their goal is to come up with a way to deal with the varroa mite because it has been so devastating to beekeepers.
Jamie began his talk to us about the state of beekeeping with a graph from NASS (the National Agricultural Statistics Service). Here's what it looked like:
This is a photo I took of my computer screen that I took with my iPhone, so if you want to see the real thing, it's on the sixth page of this.
From this graph, Jamie pointed out that the numbers of honey bee colonies in this country have been declining steadily since a peak in 1945. If you look closely, the decline has leveled off a little since the arrival of varroa!
To listen to other university researchers, we are in desperate times BECAUSE of the varroa. Jamie pointed out that we are in desperate times because of the lessening numbers of colonies, but not because of varroa.
I was particularly interested in his approach because I now know a number of beekeepers - local ones like Jerry Wallace and Bill Owens, and national ones like Michael Bush and Sam Comfort who haven't used any treatment for varroa or anything else for years.
Jerry Wallace almost sheepishly confessed to me that he (who used to use treatment including oxalic acid) has been splitting his strong hives and not worrying about the ones that died. Michael Bush doesn't count varroa for the same reason. He has hives that don't need him to count varroa. They may be in the hive but his bees are strong enough - whether that means they are hygienic or disease resistant - not to need to worry.
Jamie did not paint a pretty picture of beekeeping in these times for many reasons, but referenced many factors - environmental and otherwise. His concern was the decline in the numbers of hive SINCE 1945.
He explored the Oxbow Center where the conference was held. He is with his oldest son in the photo below.
They came to look at a giant turtle near the newsletter table where Gina and I sat, representing the GBA newsletter that we edit. We spent the day in front of a coiled rattler behind us (in a glassed display, but still...)
We brought several printed issues of Spilling the Honey and a suggestion box for ideas for the newsletter. We gave stickers that stated "I contributed to Spilling the Honey!" to everyone we saw who had written for the newsletter or who had contributed an idea or photo.
We both wore fedoras with PRESS stickers in the hatbands. We had a good time. This is not a good photo of either of us, but at least you can see our PRESS hats.
After a talk on pesticides that I missed, Jamie gave a third talk about the ways honey bees have answered life's four most important questions for him. I'm not going to try to explain the delightful, hilarious talk, but he ended by telling us how honey bees explain Lady Gaga (don't ask).
Jamie began his talk to us about the state of beekeeping with a graph from NASS (the National Agricultural Statistics Service). Here's what it looked like:
This is a photo I took of my computer screen that I took with my iPhone, so if you want to see the real thing, it's on the sixth page of this.
From this graph, Jamie pointed out that the numbers of honey bee colonies in this country have been declining steadily since a peak in 1945. If you look closely, the decline has leveled off a little since the arrival of varroa!
To listen to other university researchers, we are in desperate times BECAUSE of the varroa. Jamie pointed out that we are in desperate times because of the lessening numbers of colonies, but not because of varroa.
I was particularly interested in his approach because I now know a number of beekeepers - local ones like Jerry Wallace and Bill Owens, and national ones like Michael Bush and Sam Comfort who haven't used any treatment for varroa or anything else for years.
Jerry Wallace almost sheepishly confessed to me that he (who used to use treatment including oxalic acid) has been splitting his strong hives and not worrying about the ones that died. Michael Bush doesn't count varroa for the same reason. He has hives that don't need him to count varroa. They may be in the hive but his bees are strong enough - whether that means they are hygienic or disease resistant - not to need to worry.
Jamie did not paint a pretty picture of beekeeping in these times for many reasons, but referenced many factors - environmental and otherwise. His concern was the decline in the numbers of hive SINCE 1945.
He explored the Oxbow Center where the conference was held. He is with his oldest son in the photo below.
They came to look at a giant turtle near the newsletter table where Gina and I sat, representing the GBA newsletter that we edit. We spent the day in front of a coiled rattler behind us (in a glassed display, but still...)
We both wore fedoras with PRESS stickers in the hatbands. We had a good time. This is not a good photo of either of us, but at least you can see our PRESS hats.
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