North Central PA Beekeepers Assoc.
August 18, 2018
17 members met at the Home of John and Joan Bradley.
We introduced ourselves as we had several new members.
1. We are down to one book, First Lessons in Beekeeping. We need to order more for our classes and get quite a difference in price if we order 25 or more. Bob made a motion for the club to order 25 books, Melanie second it all approve. Joan will order the books from Dadant.
2. Reminder, if you have one hive or more you need to register with the Dept. of Ag.
3. All paid members can get a discount with American Bee Journal. Just get a form from Joan
4. Spring Seminar – Joan is not able to run a spring seminar this coming year. We need a volunteer or volunteers to run the spring seminar. If I cannot find someone than we will skip it in 2019. I will be glad to help but need someone to run it, organize it and get a speaker. Please contact me by the end of September if you can do this.
5. Bee Rocks - Bryan and Linda Perrin made fantastic bee rocks for the fair to hold down our fliers. There was so much interest in them that Bryan is planning to organize a day for kids to paint rocks and learn about bees.
This is in the early stages and he will work on plans for this.
Apiary Visit – Everyone went down to the apiary and were met with a fantastic sight! What are the chances? One of our hives was swarming!!!!!
They were above the hives than actually decided not to swarm and went back in the hive after being plastered on the front of the hive.
Bob kept a look out for the queen and hoped to catch her but she never appeared!!
Once they settled down, we were down to business. We had two hives we wanted to go into. One was a hive that Gerald, Tom, Lucille, their Grandson, John and I had rescued from a roof, a while ago. We opened the top box, which was the 4th box and it was full of beautiful brood, Very little nectar. We added another box of drawn out frames on top.
We went into another hive that had seemed queenless a few weeks ago. We had added a frame of brood last week. The first few boxes had no brood, lots of nectar and pollen. We got down to the bottom box, where we had added a frame of brood a week ago and there was capped brood and lots of capped queen cells!!!!!!! Just what we had hoped for.
We had had a hive that had laid drones only so John showed one of the frames we had taken out that was full of drone brood.
We then toured the honey house. John had converted an old trailer into the honey house. We reviewed some of the PA regulations. John and Joan have a grey water system so the wash/rinse water does not go into the septic.
Then we went thru the process John and Joan do to get beeswax from the hive to candles.
We want to thank everyone who came and participated. John and I had a great time and enjoyed visiting with everyone.
Respectfully submitted
Joan Bradley
August 18, 2018
17 members met at the Home of John and Joan Bradley.
We introduced ourselves as we had several new members.
1. We are down to one book, First Lessons in Beekeeping. We need to order more for our classes and get quite a difference in price if we order 25 or more. Bob made a motion for the club to order 25 books, Melanie second it all approve. Joan will order the books from Dadant.
2. Reminder, if you have one hive or more you need to register with the Dept. of Ag.
3. All paid members can get a discount with American Bee Journal. Just get a form from Joan
4. Spring Seminar – Joan is not able to run a spring seminar this coming year. We need a volunteer or volunteers to run the spring seminar. If I cannot find someone than we will skip it in 2019. I will be glad to help but need someone to run it, organize it and get a speaker. Please contact me by the end of September if you can do this.
5. Bee Rocks - Bryan and Linda Perrin made fantastic bee rocks for the fair to hold down our fliers. There was so much interest in them that Bryan is planning to organize a day for kids to paint rocks and learn about bees.
This is in the early stages and he will work on plans for this.
Apiary Visit – Everyone went down to the apiary and were met with a fantastic sight! What are the chances? One of our hives was swarming!!!!!
They were above the hives than actually decided not to swarm and went back in the hive after being plastered on the front of the hive.
Bob kept a look out for the queen and hoped to catch her but she never appeared!!
Once they settled down, we were down to business. We had two hives we wanted to go into. One was a hive that Gerald, Tom, Lucille, their Grandson, John and I had rescued from a roof, a while ago. We opened the top box, which was the 4th box and it was full of beautiful brood, Very little nectar. We added another box of drawn out frames on top.
We went into another hive that had seemed queenless a few weeks ago. We had added a frame of brood last week. The first few boxes had no brood, lots of nectar and pollen. We got down to the bottom box, where we had added a frame of brood a week ago and there was capped brood and lots of capped queen cells!!!!!!! Just what we had hoped for.
We had had a hive that had laid drones only so John showed one of the frames we had taken out that was full of drone brood.
We then toured the honey house. John had converted an old trailer into the honey house. We reviewed some of the PA regulations. John and Joan have a grey water system so the wash/rinse water does not go into the septic.
Then we went thru the process John and Joan do to get beeswax from the hive to candles.
We want to thank everyone who came and participated. John and I had a great time and enjoyed visiting with everyone.
Respectfully submitted
Joan Bradley