Ommatidia The monthly newsletter of the Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association

Transcription

1 the Ommatidia Dec The monthly newsletter of the Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association President s Buzz by George McAllister What do you think the public response would be if all the major news agencies reported today a strain of bacteria was attacking yellow jackets, threatening to wipeout the population? I am sure scientists would scramble to determine if the bacteria is capable of spreading to other life forms. Research will also be done to see if the yellow jacket dieoff is a leading indicator of something else going on in the environment. Assuming the bacteria will not infect other life forms and there is nothing going on in the environment, the research efforts will probably drop off leaving yellow jackets to fend for themselves. What if this strain of bacteria was attacking honey bees instead? In this case the scientists will continue working on the problem until a solution is found to save the honey bee population. One of the main differences in these two scenarios has to do with economics. Honey bees pollinate food crops, produce honey, wax and other useful products; activities seen as valuable to our economy. Most people don t realize yellow jackets are also useful. Their young feed on caterpillars, flies, spiders and other insects that damage crops. However, the yellow jacket s perceived economic value is almost insignificant compared to that of the honey bee. We spend a lot time talking about the research around CCD, varroa mites, nosema, small hive beetles, pesticide poisoning, improving queen quality but not much is said about the beekeeping industry. Most people don t realize it is the important role honey bees play in our economy that drives much of the research. Economics and most research are linked together. People buy honey bee products and services (pollination) which generates sales and promotes research making beekeeping more attractive to the beekeeper. More research increases the role of honey bees in the economy as costs December potluck & honey swap Bring your tastiest dish to share at our annual December dinner potluck meeting, 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 19 at Mouzon United Methodist Church, 3100 Selwyn Ave., Charlotte, NC We will also hold our annual honey swap during the December meeting. Bring a labeled jar of honey to swap with fellow beekeepers. Bee School 2014 Time is fast approaching for the next beginner bee school. Classes will start January 14 and runs for 9 weeks on Tuesday evenings. Cost is $70 and includes all classes, weekend events, mentoring program, the best ever goodie bag, text book, dues to county and state organizations, door prizes, and answers to all the questions you can think of. Pre-registration is required. Children may register and attend with a registered adult. Registration is now open and filling up fast. Sign up at Hope to see you there! Newsletter editor & contributors wanted Want to have fun being hands-on creating and compiling the newsletter? Well what are you waiting for? Don t delay, contact your new club president Gerry Mack at gerardmack@earthlink.net and let him know that you want to be involved. ( cont d on page 2 ) 1

2 It s That Time Don t delay for the holidays by Libby Mack Jingle bells, jingle bells yes the holidays are almost here. For your Christmas list, choose a book or two for your beekeeping library. Consider asking for the supplies for new bee products such as cosmetics, soap or mead. Is it time to spring for your own extracting or bottling equipment? And you can never have too many hive tools, buckets, supers, frames, and other hive parts. Now is also the time to consider what you want to do come spring. Make splits? Catch swarms? Harvest pollen? Use drone comb to fight varroa? New beekeeping objectives might require new equipment and supplies. If you re concerned that the bees did not lay in enough honey stores before the cold weather arrived, plan now to have some emergency food on hand. Study up on how to make a fondant candy board (lots of recipes and plans on the internet), or order some Winter Patties made of both sugar and pollen substitute. Enjoy the downtime, because by the end of the month, the days will start getting longer again and the bees will be thinking of spring. President s Buzz ( cont d from p1 ) drop, new markets open up and existing markets expand. And then the cycle repeats itself over and over again. There are many things local beekeepers can do to keep the economic and research cycle moving in the right direction. For instance, make sure you stay up to date on the latest and best beekeeping practices to keep your honey bees in optimal condition so you can produce honey harvests worth bragging about. Dr. Shimanuki summed up beekeeping quite nicely. If you produce the right number of bees that are of the right age and in the right condition, and are in the right place at the right time, you will be successful. Make sure you always offer a quality product, marketed in a professional manner. The more you can tell people about the honey and other products you are selling the better. Support our beekeeping organizations and fellow beekeepers. Many of our organizations fund research and provide education to new and existing beekeepers. Continually recruiting and educating new beekeepers of all ages keeps beekeeping alive from generation to generation. We also need to educate the general population about what s going on in our industry and the importance of protecting honey bees. Not only is the general public the consumer of our products and services but also our best supporter. Public opinion influences how government and businesses act and we want the public on our side. Beekeeping is experiencing challenges because of CCD, varroa mites, pesticide poisoning and other factors. This is nothing new since the industry, like all other agricultural endeavors, has faced similar challenges over the years. Because of the economic value of honey bees, money has been invested to keep the beekeeping industry alive. I believe beekeeping will continue to survive for many generations as long as our honey bees remain a strong contributor to our economy. In closing, this is my last President s Buzzz. My 3 years as president has been a great experience for me. I am continually impressed with the passion everyone has for beekeeping. Club members enthusiastically support each other and are willing to help out when called upon. In many ways we are a family. Have fun with the bees, ~ George 2

3 Around the Bee Yard Telling the Bees by Wayne Hansen It is customary to tell the bees when their keeper has died. That way they know what happened and can move forward. I m not sure where this custom came from, but it seems a nice tradition. And we are certainly in the part of the year that has plenty of tradition around it. Both of these men were avid gardeners, growing enough produce to keep their spouses busy canning and freezing enough food to last the winter. Howard Hargett ( ) was the neighbor across the street. When I started thinking about getting bees, I went and talked to him about it and he seemed to think it was a good idea. We attended a Mecklenburg Bee Club meeting over on Tyvola Road together, but I found out then that he couldn t hear a thing that was said that night, so he never attended another meeting with me. After I got a hive, he came over one April Sunday afternoon and asked if I wanted a swarm. One of his hives had swarmed and he gave it to me. After my hive numbers grew beyond 4, I think he thought I was a little crazy, but as I never saw him open a hive or take any honey or do anything with them, it was okay if he thought that. I remember earlier this year seeing one of my hives swarm and go hang out high in a tree for several hours. Later that day, they took off again and headed straight for one of his hives that was currently vacant. One hive is still hanging on, and had decent weight to it when I checked about a month ago. Burley Wagner ( ) lived around the corner and down the road. Another neighbor told me who he was, but I d been keeping bees for several years before I finally picked up the phone and called him one night. I should have met him back when we moved here. He could tell some stories about the bee club back when it met in the old Sears building, and he knew some of the other beekeepers that I knew like Bill Williams and Robert Wilson. He had already figured out that he didn t need to keep bees anymore, and somebody else was coming over and watching them once in a while. But I managed to find a reason to go visit once in a while and always had a wonderful time talking to him and his wife. Most recently I saw him the night of the last World Series game. For some reason he was a life-long Cardinals fan, so he enjoyed their series win a few years ago, but was a little disappointed this year. Enjoy the bees while you can, and hope you have a wonderful holiday season. 3

4 2013 Honey Tasting Winners Our 2nd Annual Blind Honey Tasting Contest was another sweet success. ABOVE: Hernan Atencio, far right, was awarded 1st place honors for his honey. Eriks Blaschka (second from right) was named 2nd place winner, and 3rd place winner was Karen Brzycki (second from left). Richard Boruta (far left) was named honorable mention. Over 50 members attended the event, and more than 40 different honeys were tasted. The members themselves were the judges. With all entries put in identical jars, no one knew whose honey they were tasting, even there own. Judges for the second and third rounds were picked by a drawing. For the first round of judging, the first 3 judges picked at random Wayne Hansen, Libby Mack and Tom Davidson, all board members. Everyone had a laugh at the coincidence. Regarding judging, Atencio said that his greatest fear would be in judging his honey out of the contest without knowing it, preferring someone else s honey over his own! As it happened, his honey did end up on his judging table, but since this is a blind contest he didn t know until the results were in. Everyone got to see how their honey fared in scoring at the end, when a bracket chart was posted showing the scores each entry received and whether they moved on to the next round of judging. The winning honeys were put back on the tables so everyone could taste the winning honeys in order. This is one of our most popular and fun meetings throughout the year. Don t miss out on next year s honey tasting, so mark your calendar for November 2014! Photos by George McAllister DoD studies honey bees for detecting land mines WASHINGTON -- The latest buzz from the Pentagon is a honey of a story: The military s trying to train bees to locate land mines. The Department of Defense, through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is in the midst of a three-year study to determine whether honeybees, equipped with tiny radio frequency tags, can help detect land mines. But as Alan Rudolph quickly pointed out, the current research with honeybees is part of a larger research study of possible military-related uses for crustaceans, insects and reptiles. The larger research project is known as the Controlled Biological and Biomimetic Systems program, said Rudolph, program manager in DARPA s Defense Sciences Office. For more information on it, see the accompanying story Creatures Feature Possible Defense Applications. First, the honeybees. Under a $3 million program funded by DARPA, scientists and engineers at various research and development centers across the United States have been working with honeybees and developing technologies to turn the insects into information collectors wearing tracking devices that may help pinpoint mines within a designated area. Later this year, engineers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Montana will fit 50 bees with the radio tags and release them into a minefield to ( cont d on page 8 ) 4

5 We use only Select Quality Hive Wood ware and accessories Available for you assembled and or painted your choice! *Complete hive: 10 Frames full of bees, all stages of brood, Queen, honey and pollen. *Italian Nucs: Available Mid Late April, 2013 *Italian Packages and Queens: Available March 25, 2013 *Russian Nucs: Available Late May- Early June, 2013 *Russian Queens: Available May 18, 2013 ( for current price list and availability!) The first honey flow of the New Year. Light color, mild in taste with notes of cool mint. Mid season flow. A bit more refined honey flavor and slightly sweeter. An early summer flow. Much darker color and the old fashion honey flavor and taste. This is a later summer honey flow. Bronze in color, with a fantastic robust honey flavor and aroma. Info@herbshoneypot.com *Be sure to visit us at the Charlotte/Mecklenburg Farmers Market every Saturday Morning! Charlotte, NC caudlejohn@att.net *Call or for current availability* All Trees and Shrubbery are field grown and B&B, and are ready to be transplanted into your landscape or Business jobsite! *We also offer Shrubbery Care and Lawn Maintenance Services* Hollies: From 3ft. to 18ft. in height ranges available Dwarf Bufordi 3-5 ft. Needle Point 4-7 ft. Wert L Winn 6-10ft. Nellie Stevens 6-12 ft. Foster 6-8ft. Savannah 8-12ft. Red Hollies: from 3ft. to 12ft. height ranges available Festive 3-5ft Robyn 6-8ft. Patriot 6-10ft. Oakleaf 6-12 ft. Crape Myrtles: From 6-24 ft in height ranges available Natchez (white) Biloxi (lt. pink) Tuscarora (med red) Carolina Beauty (med red) Tonto (dark red) Muskogee (lt. lavender) Catawba (med purple) Plus: numerous other Shrubs and Shadetree selections are available! 5

6 Nanoparticles carrying bee venom can kill HIV Nanoparticles containing a toxin found in bee venom can destroy HIV without harming healthy cells, scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine have discovered. The findings, published in Antiviral Therapy, will be used to develop a vaginal gel that could prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes Aids. Bee venom contains a potent toxin called melittin that attacks the structure of HIV and other viruses. The scientists were able to stop melittin destroying healthy cells by loading it onto nanoparticles fitted with bumpers. HIV is small enough to slot between the bumpers and make contact with the toxin, while normal cells, which are far bigger, bounce off them. Our hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people could use this gel as a preventative measure to stop the initial infection, said researcher Joshua Hood. The method could also be used to target existing drugresistant HIV infections. ~ positivenews.com Dandelion Bee Supply For all your beekeeping needs! Woodenware Protective clothing and tools Fondant / Sugar syrup Package Bees Custom woodenware available upon request Concord, NC Contact: / bees@carolinanc.com 6

7 DUES DUES DUES DUES DUES DUES 2014 Yes, it's that time of year: time to renew your membership in Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association for Also, if you'd like to join or renew membership in the NC State Beekeepers Association, we can help by submitting your dues payment for you. Both organizations deliver great value for your membership dollars and we encourage you to support them. Mail this form and your check made out to Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association to Sam Bomar Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association 1645 Sterling Road Charlotte NC Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association Please Print Clearly Name * Address * City State Zip * Phone County * Send newsletter via (thanks!) paper Number of hives: How long have you kept bees? Would you like to get more involved with the club? Yes No Today's Date Membership Year 2014 County Association $5 I am a New Member Renewing Member State Association $15 I am a New Member Renewing Member Total Payment $5 MeckBees only $20 MeckBees and NC State Assn * This information (name, mailing address and address) will be provided to all members of Mecklenburg Beekeepers (and to members only - no one else will receive this information from us). If you DO NOT want this information released to the membership, please opt out by initialling here. 7

8 Landmines... ( cont d from page 4 ) see if the combination of insect and technology works. The tags, no larger than half a grain of rice, will be attached to the backs of the bees. Scientists will track the bees using complex electronics, software and computers, some located in an engineered bee hive. Each time a bee leaves the hive, scientists will know its direction of flight, points where the bees landed and flight time. Inside the hive, special sensors will scan for chemicals brought back on the bees bodies. Scientists believe the tracking information, combined with the chemical analysis, will help pinpoint the locations of mines. Why honeybees? Rudolph said the insects have been used for many years to collect environmental information, such as the presence of pollutants or trace materials on plants. He said the Environmental Protection Agency registered honeybees as valid data collectors -- their mop-like bodies soak up any contaminants they contact. Additionally, Rudolph said social animals such as bees and dogs are highly trainable and respond well to positive reinforcement and rewards. ~ Club officers President - George McAllister, (704) , meckbees@yahoo.com Vice President - Tom Davidson, (704) , tom@tsbeeshoney.com Treasurer - Libby Mack, (704) , mack.bees@gmail.com Membership Secretary - Sam Bomar, (704) , sam@theiag.com Chaplain - Jimmy Odom, jimmy.odom@gmail.com Webmaster - Kevin Freeman, , meckbees@gmail.com MCBA Newsletter 7623 Glencannon Dr. Charlotte, NC