The Waggle
Despite the early morning snow and bitter temperatures, nearly 300 people came to the EMBA beekeeping workshop at Maritz on Saturday, February 21st. The excellent presentations by Dr. Dewey Caron and Phil Craft, the informative panel discus-sions, the demonstrations, and
the on-site presence of hive equipment and all things bees from Dadant and Kelley made the day more than worthwhile. The added plus of being around people with a common interest and pas-sion was icing on the cake. To see the day in pictures, go to page 5.
February Workshop A Great Success
I am looking forward to this spring more than any I can remember. I plan to build and use nucs for summer requeening, and see if I can get on the path to rearing my own hygienic queens.
I am still in the glow of last week’s workshop at Maritz. I can-not say enough about the incredi-ble performance of our volunteer faculty and Board members who spent so many hours preparing so well for this successful event. Our special thanks go to Tim Hyde and the outstanding work of everyone who helped us at
Maritz, and to Kelley and Dadant. Most of all, I am excited about helping our new members. As someone said at the workshop, what is most significant and im-pressive about the beginners is
how they seemed so much more interested and focused on honey bees and nature than in them-selves. This selfless focus on the bees and nature is the common thread that makes us such a committed and cooperative group. It is the source of the good nature and fun we have as a Club.
The spring will be busy! Thank-fully, much of the planning and logistics are in place, based on last year’s work. Our leadership circle is expanding rapidly as more people offer to help. We have programs that support the beginners and the intermediates and advanced alike.
Every season brings surprises; they add to the joy of beekeep-ing. Are you ready for spring? Its here! Bob Sears
President’s Message
EMBA Queens & Packages Programs
2
March Meeting Agenda 3
EMBA Spring Calendar 4
Beekeeping Workshop Pictures
5
Marketplace 5
Next meeting April 8th 6
Treasurer’s Report 6
The Club has made arrangements for EMBA members to purchase packages and queens, and to learn how to install and feed them.
Each package will contain about 3 lbs. of bees and a young, laying queen. Our supplier plans to re-move the bees from the hives, and package them for shipping on Thursday, April 18th. The Club will transport the packages to St. Louis the next day for delivery to members at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center on Saturday, April 18th. Each package is $80. There is a limit of 2 packages per order placed between March 1st and March 16th. If there are packages remaining from the Club’s allotment after March 16th, or if the Club is able to procure more, then members will be noti-fied and ordering will reopen. Queens will be handled in the same fashion. The price of a queen is $20. There is a limit of 4 queens per order until March 16th . If there are queens remaining from our allotment of 125, or if more are available, members will
be notified and ordering will re-open. Queens not purchased by April 18th will be sold on the open market.
The colonies that are started from packages should be fed when they are installed, and continu-ously throughout the spring. Feeding requires a special syrup feeder for each hive. There are no feeders in the St. Louis Beginners Kits. Accordingly, the Club has obtained, and will furnish to members who order on the web-site, two items for feeding: i) a division board feeder by Mother Lode, and ii) a 2-gallon bucket of sugar syrup. The bucket can be converted to a gravity feeder. The division board feeder has a special cap and lad-der system that minimizes bee losses. The feeders and buckets cost $5 each. There is a limit of two division board feeders per der, and one syrup bucket per or-der. The feeders may be picked up with the kits at the hive as-sembly workshop on March 28th. The syrup will be available on April 18th.
EMBA Queens and Packages Program
which your dues help to offset. If you have not paid your dues by March 30, your name will be removed from the mailing list.
DON’T LET THAT HAPPEN!
Send your $10 EMBA dues to Jane Sueme, 4931 Gemme Lane, St. Louis, MO 63128. Thank you.
ATTENTION Newsletter-by-Mail Recipients
HEADS UP!
If you have been receiving this Club newsletter in the mail because you do not have an email address and have not yet paid your annual dues, this is the last newsletter you will receive. It costs the Club about $50 per month for coping and mailing the newsletter, Packages arrive in screened
boxes, containing 3 lbs of bees.
EMBA March 11th Meeting Agenda
This month’s meeting will beheld in two sections, one for beginners, and another for inter-mediate and advanced beekeep-ers. Bring your workshop materi-als! The beginners' will be in the auditorium. Members with over-wintered colonies will be in the classroom. The groups will com-bine in the classroom to close the meeting over refreshments. The beginners section will fea-ture demonstrations and discus-sions of fundamentals that were introduced at the short course, and discussed in the first four chapters of First Lessons in Bee-keeping, the book included with the course materials. We will also review in detail the spring beginners' program and
calendar, including how and when to select and set up a site, order and assemble hives, and get started with bees.
Members with overwintered colo-nies will cover spring manage-ment topics. We will demon-strate and discuss the pros and cons of a range of approaches to spring feeding, reversing, equal-izing, requeening, making divides, and swarm prevention. These topics are covered in detail in pp. 25-30 of Caron's Beekeeping Basics, Chapter 9 of Delaplane's Honey Bees and Beekeeping: A Year in the Life of an Apiary, and Chapter 16 of Caron's Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping.
So, you thought spring was
really here? Maybe, maybe not.
State College, Pa. -- 26 February 2009 -- According toAccu-Weather.com Chief Long-Range Forecaster and Expert Senior Meteorologist Joe Bastardi, it will be a "reluctant spring in areas that have had the hardest win-ter."
More winter weather is on the way for the Northeast, as a negative North Atlantic Oscilla-tion Pattern (NOA) is "notorious this time of year." A negative NAO leads to storminess along the Eastern Seaboard.
March and April are predicted to be colder-than-normal months,
but by May, the weather will warm above normal across much of the country as true spring finally starts.
He added that several tempo-rary warm-ups will happen for the East Coast in the next few weeks. "Each warm surge that we see in the next couple of weeks won't be the true end of winter," he said.
It will be an early spring for western Texas into Arizona and the southern Rockies.
As for the mid-Atlantic, the re-gion does not average much snow, and Washington, D.C., has had a relatively snowless winter.
—Kim Flottum, Catch the Buzz
Winter Still Alive and Well
Bring your work-shop materials! The beginners will be in the auditorium. Members with overwintered colonies will be in the classroom.
• March 3 – Ordering opens online for packages, queens, and
ac-cessories. ( www.easternmobeekeepers.com/order.)
• March 11, 6: 30 p.m. - members meeting at Powder Valley
Na-ture Center (See “meetings” at www.easternmobeekeepers.com for directions.)
• March 16 – Last day for ordering: 1) EMBA hive kits by phone
from Dadant and Kelley, and 2) packages, queens, and feeding accessories from EMBA, online. (See www.easternmobeekeepers. com/order.)
• March 28 – Hive delivery and assembly workshop, Maritz, 10a.m. • April 4, 10:30 a.m. – Field Workshop at Club Apiary: “Spring
Management of Overwintered Colonies.” Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Attendance limited to beekeepers with overwin-tered colonies.
• April 8, 6:45 p.m. – members meeting at Powder Valley.
• April 18 – package and queen delivery and installation workshop,
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, time to be announced.
EMBA SPRING CALENDAR
Don’t Forget the State Meeting March 6-7!
It’s not too late to join us on Friday and Saturday, March 6-7, 2009, as a variety of entomologists, research scientists and other experts lecture on honeybee biology, disease prevention and beekeeping methods.The meeting location is:
Overland Park Marriott 10800 Metcalf (I-435 & Exit 169)
800-228-9290 or 913-451-8000
For more information call Joli Winer at (913) 856-8356 or visit Missouri State Beekeepers’ website www.mostatebeekeepers.org.
Programs and registration forms are found on the Northeast Kansas Beekeepers website, www.nekba.org
Scenes from the Beekeeping Workshop
Marketplace
FOR SALE:Locally raised, productive, gentle queens, available around May l5 to 30, 2009 weather permitting. A 10% deposit required on all Queen orders.
1-3 $l6.00 4-7 $l5.00 8-10 $12.00 Contact: Bob Graham 9727 Morse Mill Rd. Dittmer, Mo. 63023 Phone 636 274 4609.
HELP WANTED
Are you web savvy? Do you know how to maintain and manage content on a web site? EMBA needs you! We are seeking a webmaster for the EMBA site. This is a volunteer and Board of Directors position. Contact John Timmons-
[email protected], if you are interested.
foster the best practices and techniques in apiary management."
Vice President/Treasurer: Jane Sueme [email protected] Secretary: John Pashia [email protected]
Editor: Anna Roach [email protected] Webmaster: John Timmons [email protected]
www.easternmobeekeepers.com
TREASURER’S REPORT
As of March 1, 2009
Checking Account Balance: $3,461.31 Certificate of Deposit: $1,635.14
