Notes from 6/8/2015 Meeting
51
members attended. New members: Kelli Haught, Paul Johanson, Tim
Jones, Dana Junkin, Bill Montgomery, Ed and Lynn St John, Thomas Tucker,
Jessica Westin
Johnson County Fair: We
still need volunteers to man our beekeepers tent at the Johnson County
Fair, July 27-30. There are 3 shifts each day: 1st Shift = 10:00 a.m.
to 1:30p.m., 2nd Shift = 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., 3rd Shift = 4:30 p.m.
to 8:00 p.m. Volunteers so far: Monday, 1st Shift—Dave Irvin for set
up; 2nd—Dave Irvin; 3rd–open; Tuesday, 1st Shift—Floyd and Pat
Otdoerfer, 2nd—Charlie Hoehnle, 3rd—open; Wednesday, 1st—Paul Millice,
2nd—Dana Junkin, 3rd—Larry and Arlene Spina; Thursday, 1st—Paul Millice,
2nd—open, 3rd—Dave Irvin for tear down. Contact Dave Campbell
(319-545-7143) or Dave Irvin (319-331-6590) if you can cover one of the
empty shifts. You may sell honey and beeswax during your shift. All
members are welcome to help out at the booth any time.
 |
| Bob Wolff encourages members to submit entries to the Iowa State Fair |
Iowa State fair: (Bob Wolff) Iowa
State Fair will be August 13-23, 2015, in Des Moines. There are 24
Apiary categories and $1500 in prizes. Cash prizes in most categories
are awarded through 6th place, so it hasn’t been hard to win
something. Indian Creek Nature Center (319-362-0664) plans to provide
transport for entries; drop them off at ICNC on the Tuesday before fair
opens (August 11th), and they will go up on Wednesday. Contest
categories and entry forms can be downloaded from www.iowastatefair.org.
Because you never know what apiary products you will actually have
available at fair time, the absolute deadline for submitting entry forms
is very late, August 1st. Apply early, and they will mail your
stickers (for fairness, no identification is allowed on any entries
except for these official entry stickers). If late, though, you will
have to go personally to pick up your entry stickers.
Beekeeping equipment:
Long-time ECIBA member Jim Clark has died, and his estate wants to sell
his beekeeping gear. This includes many hive bodies and 3-frame nuc
boxes. Contact Bob Wolff at ICNC if interested.
Bee catching and removal:
Dave Irvin has retired from doing carpentry, but is still available for
catching and removing swarms. We need a list of other ECIBA members
who might be available to catch and remove swarms, as well: contact Dave
Campbell to get on the contact list. Contact
Jim Davis to get listed on this web page,
 |
| Dave Irvin demonstrates the use of a sprayer for mites. |
Speaker Adam Ebert: Adam’s
father, Phil, started Ebert Honey (Lynnville IA) when Adam was small;
the business now has ~1200 colonies, dealing in honey, wax, queens, and
nucs. Adam and wife now live near Mt. Vernon, and have extended the
Ebert business to eastern Iowa. Adam runs several hundred colonies
sited up and down I-380, concentrating on honey production. He charges
$35/hive for pollinating crops. Adam’s quick way to make splits is to
put 3 frames of brood (plus a few frames with honey/pollen) in an empty
hive body, shake off all the bees (to be sure to dump the queen), and
put the new box above the old with a queen excluder in between.
(Obvious point: replace frames taken from the old box with frames of
drawn comb.) Nurse bees will come up through the excluder to tend the
brood, and you can then move the split. Best do this in April or
through mid-May; Adam says a really vigorous colony might provide as
many as 3 or 4 splits. The nucs have to be queened, and are more
likely to accept a ripe queen cell than a caged queen. Adam’s
experience is that nuc boxes need not be staggered in orientation or
color; whether a new queen on her virgin flights gets back home to her
nuc seems to depend more on weather than on nuc box location. Adam has a
nuc success rate of 75-80%. Don’t put nucs too near an ag field where
they might be sprayed, but be sure the neighbor farmers know what you
are up to. Choose nuc sites with a wind break. Adam doesn’t worry much
about shade or nearby water; most places in eastern Iowa will have a
pond or stream within a quarter mile, and that’s close enough.
 |
| Adam Ebert talks about his experiences with queen rearing. |
Fresh
hatched queens are skinny and small, and may be hard to spot. It is
only after their virginal flights are over that they will get plump and
have a shinier thorax. Practice catching queens by the wings (practice
with drones or workers), and then hold them by at least two legs. She
will twist off her leg if you only hold her by one, and then be a
cripple. Queen cells from a vigorous hive are a boon: move them to nucs
or to a queenless colony that has laying workers. A laying worker
colony will seldom accept a new caged queen, but it will readily hatch
out and accept an introduced queen cell for supercedure. Adam has his
honey supers off by 3rd week of August, and treats for varroa
using apiguard or hopguard. He tests for varroa using ether rolls on
~300 bee samples. He leaves on a vented inner cover for ventilation
during winter.
==Dave Campbell, ECIBA Secretary
From the "What the heck is this?" Dept.
If you have any idea what this is, and if it has any relationship with beekeeping, please comment on the bottom of this page. Pretty sure it isn't for straining honey!
