November 2006 Next Membership Meeting is Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2006 7:30 p.m.

President Tom Merz Denise Taylor 1st Vice President Laszlo Pentek 2nd Vice President Secretary Christopher Reed Treasurer Bennie Liles Newsletter editor Alan Fiala http://www.beekeepersnova.org Website In This Issue Next Meeting Program 4H Club Report State meeting reports Beekeeping class announcements Minutes of last business meeting Fall requeening, concluded 1 1 2 3 3 4

Cafeteria, Falls Church High School 7521 Jaguar Trail Falls Church, VA 22042
Dewey Caron to speak next meeting Dewey Caron will be our very special guest speaker at the November meeting. He is a well-known educator, lecturer, teacher, and writer of books and articles on beekeeping. He is on the faculty of the University of Delaware, and a founder and guiding force in MAAREC. He plans to retire and move to the West Coast next year, at the conclusion of chairing EAS 2007 at UDel. In the past few months he has been on a hard-driving tour of mid-Atlantic beekeeping clubs to promote EAS 2007. He will be describing the details of the conference to encourage our attendance, and then speaking on The State of Beekeeping in 2006 Annual Report. Please turn out for what may be your last nearby opportunity to hear this dynamic personality. 2 B A BEE 4H Club Brenda Kiessling, Leader The 2 B A Bee club spent a Sunday afternoon in late October at Springdale Farm on Clifton Road (where the Molledas live - a 4H family). We commandeered the barn and built a large solar wax melter. It is currently at club member Daniel Bachman's house (mother Joanne Muir) in McLean, and is for use by all club members. It is the large Brushy Mountain plan one - with a few modifications. It has a large capacity, is insulated, painted black, and if the sun is hot, can melt 5-10 lbs of wax in a day. It gets 160 F inside on a hot day. The colony at Hidden Pond is doing well, and appears ready to overwinter successfully.

Future meetings of BANV The meeting room is frequently changed without notice please check at the door for announcements. January 23, 2007 Cafeteria

Pot Luck Dinner and Elections

March 27, 2007 TBD Other Meetings of Interest February 17, 2007 Howard Co. FG MSBA spring meeting April 27-28, 2007 Richmond, VA Jerry Hayes and other TBA Listgroup for BANV Join the informal discussion of beekeeping experiences among the club. To subscribe, just send a message to BANVsubscribe@yahoogroups.com, and say that you are a member of BANV. Cafeteria

BANV Newsletter, November 2006

Virginia State Beekeepers Association Winter Meeting Contributed by Jim Haskell The Virginia State Beekeepers Association (VSBA) had a record crowd of 130+ in attendance at its fall meeting at Weyers Cave, VA, on November 4. None of them went home disappointed since the VSBA planners put together an excellent program of speakers, vendors, door prizes, etc., while leaving adequate time for visiting and informal discussions. Dewey Caron from the University of Delaware and Marla Spivak from the University of Minnesota highlighted the meeting with two presentations apiece. Actually, one could argue that Dr. Caron had three since he also gave his come to EAS 2007 in Delaware spiel; and did so very effectively. His other talks on Africanized Bees (Do we need to be concerned) and Fall Management (emphasis on mites) were highly engaging and as usual for Dewey, in a light but professional manner. Spivaks presentations were on Hygienic Behavior and Propolis Collection and Questions and Qualms about Queens. Her confidence and ease of presenting difficult information in an understandable manner typified both presentations; and questions from the audience both during and after her talks testified as to the interest in her subjects. The highlight for was her simple rules for finding the queen. Since I can rarely do that, those brief rules were worth much more than the price of admission. Keith Tignors State Apiarist Report was scary as it predicted above average mortality this winter due to mites. Some of you know how high the mite counts were in late August and September. Keith also reported on the legislatively mandated Virginia Beekeepers Study and summarized its conclusions. Wyatt Mangum from the University of Mary Washington talked about his research on the coexistence of mites and honey bees in his top-bar hives. Two reports from Virginia Tech, while last on the program, ranked much higher in interest and content. Rick Fell talked about early colony build-up and increasing winter survivala very timely subject; and Lisa Burley gave preliminary results from her research on chemical effects on queen and
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drone fertility. Lisa appears to be one of the real up-and-comers to the bee research community. [Editors note: Lisa showed how she was using the new artificial insemination equipment that BANV helped purchase.] Maryland State Beekeepers Association Winter Meeting Contributed by Pat Haskell I was privileged to attend the Maryland State Beekeepers Association (MSBA) meeting on Saturday, November 11 in Annapolis. The featured speaker was Dr. Keith Delaplane, U.Ga., who spoke on the profitability of an IPM approach to containing Varroa mites. He emphasized the use of screened bottom boards and VHS (SMR) queens, most notably Russian stock. His second presentation was concerned with pollination and forage ecology touching on the honey bees value in food production as well as their benefit to the supporting the environment around us. Dr. Delaplane announced that he and his staff were leaving the field of mite research and moving into other fields. [Editors note: moving research into mites from the beekeeping level to their effect on agriculture in general.] I am looking forward to hearing and reading about his new endeavors and know that exciting research is on the horizon for him. Wayne Esaias from Howard County was the second presenter. Wayne is an oceanographer from the Goddard Space Center. His research addressed the changing nectar flows as tied to climate (global warming). I found his research exciting and very timely. He is looking for data from people who keep and monitor scale hives (those hives set on a scale and are weighed daily). If you, or someone you know, is keeping a scale hive and if you want to contribute to his research, please let Alan Fiala or me know so we can put you in contact with him. The meeting also featured a top-notch honey show. Alan again placed first with his beautiful light honey.

MSBAs next meeting will be at the Howard County Fairgrounds in February. I urge you to

attend as we need as much cross pollination as possible to keep the club strong.
Announcements for the 2007 Beekeeping Classes From Pat Haskell Beginning Classes for 2007 Once again BANV will be offering its beginning beekeepers class, Practical Beekeeping for Beginners. Classes start February 14, 2007 at Falls Church High School in the library at 7:00 pm. The course will run through the second week in April with a built in snow date. All people interested in bees and beekeeping are urged to attend whether you wish to keep bees or not. Cost covers all text books, a CD containing all PowerPoint presentations as well as other pertinent information, all handouts, and a full year membership in BANV or other local club. Families are urged to attend and will be charged for only one tuition. Registration will be at the Open House, February 10, 2007 from 10:00 am 2:00 pm, or on the first night of class. Call Pat Haskell (703560-3484) or email her at (jim.haskell@verizon.net) with any questions. Open House BANV will host an Open House for all persons interested in beekeeping or who are curious about bees. It will be held February 10th, 2007 from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm at Falls Church High School. Volunteers from the club are needed to make this successful. Call Pat Haskell @ 703-560-3484 or sign up at the November meeting. Mentors Needed! The success of our beekeeping classes and the sustainability of our Club are directly dependent upon you, our Club members, serving as mentors. The class in beekeeping is just the first small step. Mentors carry that small step into success and play a much greater role in the life of the new beekeeper. It is your words of encouragement and advice that the new beekeeper clings to as they journey into successful beekeeping. Son once again I will be asking all of you to help these new beekeepers. I will send around a sign-up sheet at the November meeting.
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Minutes of the September 26, 2006 Meeting of BANV BANV President Tom Merz called the meeting to order at 7:40 p.m. Treasurer Bennie Liles reported that the treasury holds $2865.31 and we have a current membership of 82 people, more than double the membership of last year. Bennie said the treasury has a larger balance than usual because of the larger membership and because the BANV booth at the Arlington County Fair did very well this August. Mr. Merz provided the gross sales figure for the Arlington County Fair, $6582.75 and information showing more hive products were sold at this fair than at any previous fair despite higher prices. The members attending the September meeting in the Falls Church High School cafeteria approved both the treasurers report and the minutes to the last meeting. Dane Hannum announced that he and Larry Kelley plan to drive down to Wilbanks Apiaries in Claxton, Georgia about April 1, 2007, to haul package bees and queens back to Northern Virginia. Anyone who wants to reserve packages of bees or individual queens should contact Dane soon after Thanksgiving weekend to place an order. Last year three-pound packages sold for $52 each and they sold fast. Dane doesnt yet know how much bees will cost in 2007. Dane, who is also the only local beekeeper that removes colonies of honey bees from buildings, reported he has been busy as a bee this year with 15 calls for his services (almost three times the number of calls he usually gets in one year). Kathy Heslep thanked ED Dillon for coming to the rescue when BANV was setting up the booth for the Arlington County Fair and needed a place to hang the BANV banner. Ed went home and quickly made a portable stand to hang the banner on. The stand was disassembled after the fair to store and use again at the next fair. Brenda Kiessling passed around for review and comment copies of a draft brochure that provides basic information on bees and BANV to replace our old brochure. Brenda and Frank Linton wrote the new brochure. Furthermore, Brenda announced that she knew of four apiary sites (one in McLean,

one in Arlington, one in Alexandria and one in Annandale) in need of beehives. Pat Haskell reported on her new use of nematodes to control populations of Small Hive Beetles in apiaries. She has found application of nematodes is not easy, in part because the ground has to be wet before the nematodes are spread on the soil. Pat purchased nematodes from Southeastern Insectaries, Inc., which has a toll free phone number (1-877 967-6777). Dane added that Small Hive Beetles are becoming a common problem in Virginia apiaries and honey houses. The beetles will take over weak colonies and honey supers removed from hives for extraction. Strong colonies are normally able to defend their hive against invasion by the beetles. Our web master, Don MacIntyre, asked for the names and contact information for members who want to sell honey, pollen, candles or other hive products via the BANV web page. He has heard from folks who would like to buy hive products that found out about BANV on the Internet. Don suggested that the web page for BANV could list contact information for those beekeepers that would like to sell to the public. Beekeepers may also list the farmers market location and hours where their honey may be purchased. Claudia Coles, a member who keeps solitary bees, offered to provide information on solitary bees to others who might be interested in keeping these beneficial insects. Some species of solitary bees are well suited to providing pollination in dense, urban neighborhoods. New people attending the September meeting included Youquan Zhou of Herndon, Carl Johnson of Falls Church, Martha Gibbons of Arlington, Ronnie Finch and Doug Mose of Fairfax, Linda Ferguson of Ashburn, and Walter Reinheimer of Maryland. Thirty-two people in all attended the meeting. Frank Linton gave a presentation titled Bees in the Boudoir about all he has learned from an observation hive in his house. The observation hive, purchased from Betterbee, Inc., holds two deep frames of comb where Frank observes the life cycle of the bees year round. Respectfully submitted, Christopher Reed, Secretary
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(Mis-)Adventures in Fall Requeening (Continued) Alan Fiala I left off my description of requeening all my hives in the fall with the queens in cages being inserted into divides set over parent colonies, and wishing to complete the task with time enough to do one last varroa treatment, though it was already mid-Sept. Five days later, Pat and I manually released three of the queens. Two were not molested, the third was questionable, so we put her back into her cage. The other two cages were still under attack. We searched for queen cells and found none. Four days after that I released the other three queens and lost track of them pretty quickly. Four days later, and 13 days after introduction, I could find none of the 5 queens, but there were eggs and brood in the first two divides where queens were released, so I combined those divides with the parents. Bad news an unmarked queen appeared in a third divide. I was not able to catch and mark her. Two days later, and 20 days after the divides, the first unmarked queen was marked (the bees tried hard to remove it), and a second unmarked one found in the fourth divide. I am frustrated, as I do not want to treat for varroa at this stage and time is running out. The fifth divide has no sign of a queen, no eggs or brood, so I combine that divide and parent and decide to wait two more days for the divides with unmarked queens. Two days later eggs and brood in those two divides. I combine the last two divides but now it is well into October and temperature is too low to do a chemical treatment. It occurs to me much later that I could have done powdered sugar. Of the five new queens, only two had survived. We had missed queen cells in two more divides, and they had produced their own queen. The last hive presumably still had the original queen. I began feeding heavily, and my schedule and the weather did not permit a full inspection until 6 weeks later. At that time, two weeks ago, all the colonies appeared to be healthy, with some open brood and capped brood on at least four frames. All pollen and grease patties were gone, with plenty of honey but little pollen stored.