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New Editor
The torch has been passed from Fred Gower to Glenn Engel to edit our
monthly newsletter. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up with Fred’s many
interesting beekeeping activities but I’ll give it a try. Thanks
Fred for doing it these last few years! If you have
suggestions for articles or content please be sure to drop me an email.
If you have trouble reading this newsletter via email please let me
know.
Beekeeping
Calendar
Thanks to Jim Bach, our Beekeeping Calendar has been modernized and will
hopefully have a bit more detail on what activities you should be doing
each month. He graciously took our old version and spiffed it up quite
a bit. I’ll be including snippets each month as reminders but you can
view the whole thing from our website at
http://www.nwdba.org. Just click on
Beekeeping Calendar. I've
included three months worth in this issue to get you started in case you
were wondering what you should have done last month!
Dates to Remember
June 6-7: WSU
Picnic/BBQ and Bee Lab tour.
June 10: June NWDBA Meeting
Nov 6-8: Hood River, Oregon Tri-state Convention.
Meeting Agenda
This
month Lawrence will be talking about Apitherapy. We will also
schedule our July picnic and pick a date for the regional beekeepers
meeting - stay tuned.
Mailing List
This newsletter is being sent via email to a
mailing list at
beekeeping@nwdba.org. You can send mail to this list and
everyone who gets a newsletter via email will get your message. If
you wish to reply to an email message you should use 'Reply to All' if
you want everyone on the list to see your reply. New list members
are welcome to join by clicking on the Join Mailing List link on your
website. If you get duplicate newsletters or want to be removed
from the distribution list just reply to this email and let me know.
Dues
A lot of us haven't paid our 2003 dues:
$7.50 single, $10 for family membership. Take a dollar off per
person if you are a member of the state organization. If that
includes you please send a check to our Treasurer Pete Wolcott, 2141 NE
195th Pl, Seattle, 98155. See the website for
journal
subscription info.
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April Beekeeping
Put Terramycin medicated patties over the brood rearing
area, or between the two boxes if you have 12-14 frames of bees.
Continue comb rotation. Make sure there are enough honey stores or
feed your bees. Hives should have at least one full frame of pollen and
several frames of honey. If hive is light, feed the bees a 1:1 sugar
syrup mixture. Feed pollen supplement if necessary. If the colony is
continuing to build up add a honey super every three weeks until June 1
(= 3 deeps or equivalent in westerns = 4-5 deeps of bees by June 1).
May Beekeeping
If you need
more drawn comb, give the bees full sheets of foundation to draw out.
Add no more than two or three frames of foundation at a time to the
center of the upper hive body. Never divide the brood nest with
foundation, alternate foundation between combs of brood. Queens should
now be laying at full capacity. Honey yields will be greater if
swarming is controlled by removing swarm cells that contain eggs or
larvae on the bottom or any edges of the comb.
June Beekeeping
Blueberries
are in bloom the first week; Blackberries in bloom the second week;
Black Locust the last week. 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.
Email?
If you are getting this newsletter via regular post
and would like to get it via email instead, please send me your email
address. About half your dues go to the post office!
American Bee Journal
Check out pages 256-257 of the April Issue for some
humor about one of our esteemed members - Mel Loomis!
Questions
Have a question about beekeeping you'd like to see
answered in the newsletter? Just send an email to
newsletter@nwdba.org.
See you at the Meeting!
Glenn |
