Janine, a home economics teacher and Alameda County Beekeepers Assoc. member, is teaching cooking at the Martinez Boy & Girls Club. She wants to re-certify the B&G Club Kitchen. In addition to helping out the boys and girls, this would mean another stainless steel kitchen for beekeepers to use, and probably be the most affordable.
Here's her wish list -- along with suggested prices you could use to report donations on your income taxes -- although CASH is also welcome.
Knives and restaurant-scale utensils
Hobart Legacy 20 quart
mixer Item No.: HOBHL200-1STD
or
Globe SP20 20 Qt Gear Driven Mixer,
$2,095 from website at globeequipment.com
Kelmax Bun Pan Rack K.D.
Item No.:
KMAXAPRE20183KD $175.
Metro Bun Pan Rack #RE3, holds 20 pans,
Cambro plastic containers, , Cambro Square Container White Poly 22qt
Item No.: CAM22SFSP $14. each. need 4
Chrome Wire shelves Chrome
Wire Shelf 24 x 60 inches
Item No.: CKKS2460C need 3, $38 each
California Cooking Chrome Post 74 inch
Item No.: CKKP74C need 4 (to
assemble shelving) $11. each
Janine also is planning a musical benefit. Armando's, a little music club in Martinez, has agreed to host the fundraiser.
Says Janine, “I'm planning on asking a few musician friends of mine to donate two hours each to entertain on a Sunday. We could sell tickets for $10-15 and have music for 6+hours. More about that as I get confirmation from all the musicians. After talking with all the musicians, I can have a date that is good for all.”
Contact Janine Sanders via email at Janine[at]scone island[dot]com. For help hauling stuff out there, contact KO at visualeyes108[at]yahoo[dot]com.
The Alameda County Beekeepers Association will meet tonight -- and every second Tuesday throughout the winter.
Meetings are at the Rotary Nature Center, 552 Bellevue Ave., on Lake Merritt in Oakland. Meetings start at 7:30 PM and usually run until 9 PM. Everyone is welcome, so come on out and learn about bees, get your apiculture questions answered, and meet other bee nuts.
We have a Speaker - Oct 9 Meeting
Camilla Berry will talk some about her Afghanistan trip and her experiences with the beekeepers there. She'll also talk about a healing salve she makes, of which honey is a critical ingredient. She shared the recipe with several Afghan groups there, and women in Afghanistan are now selling this salve. She'll bring some to share around. She may also get to soap making with beeswax, which is a lesson we taught in an Afghan high school. Camilla will speak for free, but would really appreciate it you could mention that she accepts donations for our upcoming Afghanistan trip in March or April. We go over to teach science, and she pays for the majority of the trip out of her own pocket. Donations from bee groups in the past have been instrumental in allowing her to make the trips she has already made.
Roger Hess, one of our club members, died last year. His wife, Kathy, has asked me to liquidate Roger's beekeeping equipment. She is donating Roger's solar wax melter and extractor to the club, and has asked in return that we auction his remaining beekeeping equipment for her. We have two car loads of just about anything you can imagine, including a fair amount of woodenware, plenty of bears and jars, two suits, etc. We will be bringing all of this stuff to the next meeting in the hopes that all of you will buy the stuff...so bring some extra cash. We will start the auction after the meeting.
You can still get the cool
pollination stamps from your local postoffice. Bats, Butterflys & HummingBirds are also pictured but we know who does the heavy lifting.
You've heard the stories: Itinerant beekeepers trucking their hives to work the orchards of the Central Valley and beyond. Now, see the movie.
Pollen Nation, a film by Singeli Agnew and Joshua Fisher, is completed and ready for the Mill Valley Film Festival. Visit the site, and catch the flick:
- Mill Valley Film Festival: Saturday, October 6 and Sunday, October 14
- Taos Mountain Film Festival: Friday, October 5
- Ojai Film Festival: Saturday, October 6
- Montana CINE International: October 2-7
- Kern Projections Film Festival: October 10-14
Karen P. recommends Michael Bush's article, "Lazy Beekeeping." She says, "I was particularly thankful to see how one can adjust hive configurations as one ages to accommodate a less resilient back and/or knees (and upper body strength for us gals).
Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science has a highly informative post about a study showing the advantages of genetic diversity within a bee colony.
As you know, a virgin queen may mate with several males on her nuptial flight, including males from other hives. When researchers compared hives where the queen was artificially inseminated (!!) with a single drone's semen to those where the queen received semen from multiple males, the latter did much better.
A couple things in the article that were peripheral to the main story struck me:
Young says that 80 percent of colonies starve over the winter. I assume he means wild colonies; he goes on to say of the experimental hives,
In late August, a cold period killed about half of the single-father colonies and by December, they were all dead. But the multi-father ones all pulled through the autumn cold and 25% made it past the winter freeze.
In other words, this seems like a really low survival rate.
Regarding the continuing questions about Colony Collapse Disorder, I wonder if commercial beekeepers -- as well as us backyard beekeepers -- are simply expecting a higher survival rate than is possible.
Beekeeper Yvette Renee posted a question on her blog, and I'm cross-posting it here. You can answer in the comments here or on her blog:
I am a backyard beekeeper. I also have dogs and cats, and a new baby girl!
I am trying to connect with the alameda beekeeper's association, which has its own blog on vox. I need some beekeeping advice.
I have two hives. One we call Adeline, the other Betty so that we know which hive we are talking about. Betty has always been a bit feistier than Adeline. Both Adeline and Betty are going real strong and healthy this year. Betty was so strong about three months ago, she had 8 swarm cells. I have never seen so many swarm cells in either of my hives! With the baby due, and no extra honey super wax (the two supers on there were already pretty full) we decided that the easiest way to give her some more space quickly was to add a second brood box. This was a first experiment with a double-decker brood. By the time I got through the hive and got that second box on, Betty was really angry, and I didn't have a chance to carefully space out the brood frame, which would have been a good idea since we only had 9 brood frames.
Betty went crazy and drew out the comb and filled it with honey and tons more brood in no time. The few times that I worked through Betty's hive it was hard for two reasons, in my opinion. One, the extra space meant everytime I pulled out some of the frames I wrecked some of the free from brood Betty was happy to make in the free space. The second reason it was hard was that it takes forever to work two brood boxes! I honestly don't understand how anyone manages it without leaving the hive open for far too long! So Betty has not been happy with me any time I worked her boxes.
So my problem is that after the last three times I have worked Betty she stays pretty mad. How do I know this? The hive is in our backyard. For two-three days after going through Betty, as soon as we walk out the back door a group of bees end up buzzing around our heads. Sometimes darting at us. It always seems like one bee is on the lookout and she goes and fetches some of her buddies to come back with her to investigate us. They follow us around the side of the house even!
This seems aggressive, doesn't it? It seems like they have fixed on the area of our back door and are constantly patrolling it. The hive is about 20 feet from the back door.
Does any beekeeper have any ideas about what to do? Betty is stressing my hormone-driven girlfriend out in a major way! She lost her bee-nerve when she got pregnant.
This weekend I reduced the brood back to one box. The majority of the brood was downstairs anyway, and they can replace the brood with honey when the rest hatch out, hopefully. We also just got more wax, so I can put another super on her soon.
We plan to requeen Betty in the fall, since her hive seems overly aggressive.
Does anyone have any other idea?
All comments and suggestions are
welcome.
For background, Adeline has always been pretty chill. Betty started out as a
swarm from Adeline.
Several club members and other local beekeepers are mentioned in an article published today in the East Bay Express. Alameda County Beekeepers Association member (and contributor to this blog) Susan Kuchinskas wrote the story.
Read it here: Are Bees Too Busy?
The San Francisco Beekeepers Association has posted its schedule for the rest of 2007, with lots of interesting events:
Wed. August 8, Tom Vercoutere, president of the San Mateo club, discusses candle-making.
Sat. August 12, “How to Build a Bee Hive,” 10-noon, Garden for the Environment with Philip Gerrie and
Paul Koski.
Thurs., August 23, 7:30 PM, UC Berkeley entomologist Gordon Frankie will give a Randall Museum lecture
on “Garden Flowers for Attracting Native Bees.”
Wed. September 12, Marin Ag commissioner Stacey Carlsen is our guest speaker.
Wed. October 10, Group discussion of honey harvesting, mite & other disease control and prepping for winter.
Wed. November 14, Camilla Barry will discuss what to do with all those cappings you have collected: making
soap with beeswax.
Wed. December 12, annual holiday party and election of new officers.
Regular meetings are held at the Randall Museum on the second Wednesday of each month. For more information, or to join this club, go to the website at sfbee.org.
The July newsletter of the Washington State Beekeeping Association is on the WSBA web site at www.wasba.org. The Apiary Advisory Committee has been formed and remember to write your Congressperson about the Pollinator Protection Act.
