While Glen Andresen was busy flipping pancakes at the family booth of Junction City’s Scandavian Festival, Dr. Dewey Caron took over our August 5th meeting with practical advice for how to start the beekeepers new year off and transition into fall. His presentation was full of a vibrant Q&A from our members, mostly around feeding and requeening practices. As we help our bees prepare to overwinter, Dewey reminded us of last year’s Pacific Northwest honey bee loss survey results (pnwhoneybeesurvey.com), debunking some practices as statistically insignificant, and some as trends. Very few practices showed significant success in preventing overwinter losses, such as chemically treating for varroa mites. Dewey, as always, encourages us all to try new overwintering techniques and share our results in the 2016 survey!
PUB’s apiary at Zenger Farm has seen some exciting growth this year! We started the year with two hives, and to that have added eight nucleus hives, resulting in twelve hives going into fall. The property has been cleaned up, with fresh woodchips and improved shelters and equipment. Zenger Farm is dedicated to education and experimentation. See our calendar to find out when the next volunteer work party is, they are an amazing way to get beekeeping experience!
We’re getting excited for some events coming up this fall and winter:
At our November 4th meeting we’ll be hosting a Show & Tell where members and guests are encouraged to show off their products and share recipes. We will invite local companies to share what they are doing, and people can bring items to sell.
Get your bee-related art projects ready to show at PUB’s December 1st Photo and Art contest, complete with prizes. We’ll be having a potluck and honey tasting to compliment the art.