BEELINES June, 2006

Regularly scheduled meetings are on the 2nd Tuesday of each month. 7 p.m.
Meetings at 1305 Pine Avenue in Snohomish in the Christ the King Lutheran Church building.

 
     

Dates to Remember
June 13: NWDBA Meeting
July 15: Puyallup Field Day
July 16: NWDBA Picnic
Aug 24-Sept 4: Evergreen State Fair
October 12-14: State Convention hosted by Mt Baker, Best Western Lakeway Inn, Bellingham
October 25: Regional Meeting 6PM at Mt Vernon Royal Fork

Next Meeting: Tuesday June 13, 2006
The June  meeting will include a talk by Tim on swarming and swarm control, a timely topic given our current spring buildup.  We will hopefully get an update from anyone who attended the Field day at WSU Saturday.

Also at the June meeting the membership will vote on final plans for the Ag Booth at the Evergreen State Fair.  Please check your calendars for Aug 24-Sept 4th so you can sign up for shifts at the Honey Department booth and the Ag booth.  Both will likely be 10-4 and 4-10 shifts.

May Meeting
Our educational program was given by Lindsay Person (Scott Jenrich's wife, they took Tim's last class.) on the subject of Pollination and Bee Plants in your Garden.  It was very well done.  She covered the basics of pollen transference, along with a sampling of flora from her garden to  use as examples of different blossom shapes and colors.  Her two page handout listed a dozen of the most common types of honey in the United States and both native and non-native supplemental plants to attract honey bees to your garden.  A wonderful effort and much appreciated by all! 

Pete Wolcott is still collecting information for the brochure that will be used as a handout at the fair.  Please get in touch with him if you have anything to be included..

We voted to approve the purchase of a banner w/grommets for use with the fair booths.  The price not to exceed $300. .  Connie Bueler is looking into this for us.
 
IThere was discussion as to the use of funds from the upcoming silent auction in conjunction with our July potluck, but no final notation as to what decision was actually made.  By default, it will be in the same vein as in the past that we would apply the money to research of some type and/or educational items needed to fill in where necessary with the fair booth exhibit.

The Regional meeting is set for October 25th at 6:00p.m. at the Royal Fork in Mt.Vernon
  

May Meeting Cont'd
TIm Bueler gave an update on the WSU Research Apiary in Mt Vernon.  Tim has taken on all of the initial setup of this apiary setting up nucs and getting packages installed.  These nucs will be requeened with  WSU queens and maintained by area beekeepers and associations.  This will be a great benefit to apiary research - many thanks to Tim for taking the lead on this.  This project is in need of additional volunteers from every association to make it work.  Please contact Tim at to get yourself added to his Research Apiary email list.

July 16th Picnic
We will have our annual picnic on Sunday July 16th at at the Flowing Lake County Park starting at high noon for setup with dinner by 1:00-1:30.  We have the site reserved all afternoon to dusk so bring the kids and sunscreen.  This will be a potluck so pick one of main dish, salad, or desert and extra to share.  The club will provide a variety of soda as well as plates and eating utensils.  We will also feature an auction so bring something to donate to the cause.  For those of you with web access, click here to get a map.  This is a county park so you'll have to pay $5 to park.

June Beekeeping
Blueberries are in bloom the first week; Blackberries in bloom the second week; Black Locust the last week.  If you use queen excluders, remove the queen excluder when there is one box (deep or western) mostly full of honey over the brood nest.  Continue to monitor brood nest crowding.  Bees sometimes store honey close to and in the brood nest causing crowding.  There should be one or two empty brood combs for the queen to lay in.
 

July Beekeeping
If brood nest crowding occurs consider adding another brood nest (western).  Only remove combs of honey when they are 2/3 capped (nectar won’t shake from combs).  Early morning or evenings are the best times for removing comb to discourage robbing. 

Note:  Do not use brood nest combs in the honey supers to prevent contaminating honey with miticide residues.  Identify brood nest combs and boxes (westerns and deeps) with colored paint so that combs are not interchanged.
 
President - Jerry Robnett (360) 387-3693
Secretary: Glenn Engel (425) 334-0576
Editor: Glenn Engel (425) 334-0576		 Vice Pres.: Jim Tunnell (360) 568-7451 
Treasurer: John Bryant (425) 334-8575
Website: http://www.nwdba.org