The Short Course is DONE!

Julia and I worked since last summer getting ready for the short course.  It's amazing how much time it takes to prepare an event like that.  There are many little details, but we covered almost every one.  There were only tiny things that we wish we had done differently.

Here's what the room looked like on Friday, waiting for the registrants to arrive on Saturday.

 These are what we called the pollen baskets.  As people came in, they picked up their name tags and sat down.  Most of the people were from the Metro area, but we had someone with a Colorado address as well as people from outside of the Metro Atlanta area.  There were 105 registrants.  We sold out the week before the short course and had to tell about 30 people that we had no room for them after that.

However, our registration process was pretty clear to people and we didn't have anyone show up on the day of the event wanting to come in at the last minute, which was great because that would not have been fair to the 15 people on the wait list and the total of 30 that I told we didn't have room after registration closed.

The photo below is for the volunteer table.  We had antennae for the volunteers so people would know who was available to answer questions.  At lunch we had an "experienced beekeeper" sit at each lunch table so the participants could ask one on one questions during the lunch. Without some designation, the experts don't look any different than the participants, so we asked them to wear antennae.

The men were generally good sports about it!  Chris was a fabulous volunteer all day long, wearing many virtual hats, and, of course, his antennae.

We had demonstrations of how to light a smoker.  Curt did a great job of showing the participants how it is done.

And we had some breakout sessions on building hive equipment, top bars and foundationless beekeeping, and making hive products.  We were supposed to have a breakout on qualifying for certified naturally grown but the presenter decided she didn't want to talk about the topic - didn't really matter since only a few participants had signed up for it.

Noah's talk on top bar hives and foundationless beekeeping got the highest ratings for the breakout sessions so far in the evaluations we've received.  He is the youngest master beekeeper in the state of Georgia and is a very poised speaker, fielding questions well and doing an overall good job.

Julia and I enjoyed our work together to plan and prepare the course and I heard all day from many people that they were getting a lot out of it, so I am very, very pleased.

Goody Bags for Short Course

Our MABA Short Course is this Saturday - it's been full at about 110 people for the last two weeks.  Julia and I are chairing it for next year so we have to pay close attention this year to make sure we have an idea of what we will be doing.

One of my volunteer tasks this year was to make the lip balm for the goody bags that the participants take home.  The bags have a lot of items in them - catalogs from bee companies, lists of local bee suppliers, resource lists of Internet and other resources (including this blog ;-}), a small jar of honey, a small candle, and a tube of lip balm - guess whose job it was to make the lip balm?

Mine.

So tonight I poured 100 tubes of lip balm.  We already have a few more to make up the 112 or so that we need.

First I melted wax in the Presto Pot:

Then I set up my pouring tray with fifty lip balm tubes (I get them from Majestic Mountain Sage).  I got orange tops for the tubes so they wouldn't get lost in the Goody bag!

So I melted the wax.  In a Dutch oven filled with simmering water, I put my oversized measuring cup.  I put into that 1/2 cup plus 4 T of sweet almond oil, 1 tsp honey, 1 tsp cocoa butter (had to heat it with my hair dryer to allow me to scoop out a teaspoon), 1 tsp vitamin E oil, 9 T beeswax, melted.

All of this sits in the hot water until I am ready to pour.  Then I pour it in the tubes.  Notice I set the pouring tray on a sheet of wax paper in a cookie sheet.  This makes for a clean work surface and any drips can be scraped off of the wax paper with a rubber spatula and remelted, but you couldn't do that off of the counter.

I scrape off the excess from the tray and remelt it.  Then I refill the tray, make the mixture again and fill another 50 tubes.  The recipe will fill about 40 - 50 tubes.

Finally I capped the tubes with the cute orange tops:

Tomorrow night I'll print and put on the labels, but for now, I'm off to bed.  If you try to make lip balm and have any helpful hints, please post them in the comments section below.

Goody Bags for the Metro Short Course

Taking the Metro Short Course brings a wealth of bee knowledge. The presenters are people like Jennifer Berry (who writes a monthly article for Bee Culture and manages the apiary at UGA), Keith Fielder (Georgia Master Beekeeper and field agent), Cindy Bee, Curtis Gentry (author of the Peace Corps guide to building top bar hives) and many others.

In addition, the participants go home with a goody bag full of bee "goodies." Some of what is in the bag is in the photo above. I'm in charge of the Goody Bags this year - it's my third time doing this job.

The goodies include more than is in the picture. In the picture you see the bag, a jar of honey, a tube of lip balm, a CD with PDFs of the presentations of each of the presenters, a copy of First Lessons in Beekeeping by Keith Delaplane, a copy of ABJ, various bee catalogs, pamphlets from the National Honey Board. In addition, we'll add to this tomorrow a copy of Bee Culture, a list of regional bee suppliers who sell nucs and packages, a resource list of Internet connections, a handmade candle, and a couple of other things.

These items have occupied one side of my sun porch all the fall. I will be so glad to give them away on Saturday!

I was also in charge of burning the CDs and making the @$%^#$^ labels for them. That is a job I never want to do again. It's difficult to gather all the PDFs of the presentations and I found making the labels beyond challenging.

 The program that came with the labels taught how to calibrate the printer, which I did so that it printed perfectly on the model. Then on the actual label, the printer often pulled the paper in incorrectly and I threw away almost as many labels as I actually used. Never again.

NOTE:  If you're counting, this is my 800th post on this blog!

Rare Day - Snow on my Beehives

It snowed off and on all day today - an unusual winter occurrence in Atlanta. The bees, wise as they are, apparently remained indoors, as well they should. Temperatures are supposed to be in the 20s tonight, so I don't expect to see bees before next week when it warms up.

I spent today at the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Short Course, held in spite of the inclement weather. I had a small role on the agenda and did the "goody bags" which we gave to the participants. We had a fantastic turnout and I hope will end up with inspired new beekeepers as well as new members of our Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Club.

Goody Bags for the Short Course

It's my job to put together the "goody bags" for the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Short Course that happens this Saturday, January 19th at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. (not too late to register, if you're interested)

The goody bag is a compilation of wonderful items that I put in the bag, but that come from other places - it's a great gift for the participants, if I say so, myself.Included in the goody bag are:

• American Bee Journal
• Bee Culture Magazine
• A catalog from Walter T Kelley Company
• Some have catalogs from Rossman Apiaries
• Others have Dadant catalogs
• Each person gets a copy of First Lessons in Beekeeping by Dr. Keith Delaplane
• Some literature from the National Honey Board
• A gift certificate to go on a hive inspection led by a Metro Beekeeper at the Atlanta Botanical Garden beehives
• A list of Internet resources
• A handmade pinecone candle
• A jar of honey
• A container of my lip balm (!)
• A votive candle

It's like going to a party - the participants at the Short Course will have a lot of fun, get to eat together and talk bees, and go home with a goody bag full of treasures.

Beekeeping Short Course at Botanical Garden

Last year I got started with my bees by taking the "short course" offered by what is now my beekeeping group: the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers. This year the short course is on

Saturday, January 20,
from 8:30 - 4:30
at the Atlanta Botanical Garden
1345 Piedmont Ave. N.E
Atlanta, Ga 30309

The course is great to help you get started in beekeeping. I learned how to build the parts of the hive that are essential (how to put together a frame, for example); how to think about the year in the apiary; how to consider handling various pests and bee diseases; when and how to feed the bees; when the honey flow starts; the biology of the bee; and all about pollination (did you know that 80% of what we eat is in some way dependent on bees to pollinate some plant involved in that product?)

There are also great door prizes and lots of them. Last year I won a complete set of deep super frames (looked like a pile of specially cut wood to me, but they were easy to construct and quite helpful). I'm one of those people who never wins anything, but I did at the short course as well as did many others.

My job for the club is to put together the Goody Bag for the course. We do have lots of goodies - from tiny jars of honey put up by one of our members, PN Williams, to literature from the National Honey Board and the Georgia Dept of Agriculture.

If there are any of you out there who'd like to come, here's where you register. A day of bee education like this is not to be missed!