Current Events
- Monthly Meeting (Monday, 20 Apr) Bring your bee suit(s) and veils. John Grafton will be our featured speaker. John was the State Inspector from the Ohio Department of Agriculture. With his 30+ years of experience, he's seen pretty much everything you can see in a beehive. He will open the hives (weather permitting) in our club's beeyard and examine them for disease, swarming, etc. Come ready to get up-close and personal with the bees. (We will have a few spare veils.)
See the calendar for more.
Picture of the Month
Junior Beekeeper holding a queen cage
Picture submitted by Michael Stefan
click on the picture to expand
New to the Website
- If you haven't been out to our new discussion forum yet, please take a minute and create an account. You can post and answer beekeeping questions, write about your own beeyard and generally discuss the club's business, all online.
- We still need more pictures for the webpage. If you have a picture you'd like to see posted, send it in.
Apiary Survey due by 17 April 2009
The Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are conducting a survey of honeybee losses in 2008/9. The survey is due by April 17. Please copy the questions below into an email and send them and your replies to beeloss@gmail.com.
The information you provide will be entered into a spreadsheet and will not be attached to your name or address in any way. The results of this survey will be compiled and published so that everyone can see how bees are doing in the United States . These results, along with those from the past two years, will be used to secure research funding and assistance for bee health.
You can see the full report of losses over the winter of 2006-2007 as published in the ABJ here and the losses from 2007-2008 here.
- In what state(s) and county(s) do you keep your hives? (If you keep hives in more than one state or county, please answer questions 2-9 separately by location.)
- How many hives did you have alive in September 2008?
- How many hives are alive now (March/April 2009)?
- How many splits, increases, and/or colonies did you make/buy since September 2008?
- What percentage of loss, over this time period, would you consider acceptable?
- What percentage of your hives that died had no dead bees in the hive or in the apiary?
- To what do you attribute the cause of death for the hives that died?
- What percentage of your hives did you send to CA for almond pollination?
- How many times, on average, did you move your colonies last year?