Seacoast Beekeepers Association July 2009 Newsletter Next Meeting: July 16 th at the Robinson Farm Brentwood, N.H. 6 p.m. til closing! President: Amy Robinson 642-3526 Vice President: Amy Antonucci 664-2796 Treasurer: Don Powers 394-7306 Sec. /Editor: Karen Johnson 436-8742 bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Notes from your President: Another rainy day in June and I am wondering if there will be a honey crop this year. All of our individual microclimates are different, but my main nectar flow is three weeks in June during which the bees have been mostly inside this year. Hopefully this rain will set up a good mid to late summer flow for their winter food, but I am not at all sure the humans will have much honey this year. We shall see..a bad June for beekeepers and hay farmers, a good one for lettuce, beet greens and slugs. Thanks so much to Amy Antonucci for running June s meeting, and to those who brought refreshments. Thanks to Dave Chamberlain for being our obliging Coffee Czar. I hear through the grapevine that the School to Farm program at UNH went well, thanks to volunteers: Wendy Booth, Amy Antonucci, Paul Gamelin, Ellie Palmer, Karen Johnson, Julie Coleman, and Bill and Wendy Booth s bees, who admittedly did not volunteer, but put up a brave front anyway. It is so important for kids to learn about the importance of honeybees, and I m sure they learned a lot from these good sports. Note the change of meeting venue and time for July!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SEACOAST BEEKEEPER S JULY MEETING Potluck Picnic at Brad and Amy Robinson s farm July 16, 2009 (this is instead of the Grange meeting)
6:00pm until closing! (Rain or shine) Bring a main dish or salad to share for 6-8 people Beverages and dessert will be provided (If you want alcohol, BYOB) Paper plates will be available, but bring utensils plastic silverware won t be provided and we may not have enough forks Also, bring lawn chairs we have some and a picnic table, but not enough seats for everybody. Directions: From Lee, Rochester, Durham, Epping, Candia, etc. Get yourself to the intersection of Routes 125 and 101. Drive south on Route 125 for 4.6 miles. You will come to the intersection of 125 and South Road, which will be preceded by a yellow intersection sign saying South Road. Turn left (east) on South Road (Mitchell Animal Hospital will be at that intersection). Drive 1.5 miles and the white farmhouse is on your left (mailbox with #155 on right). Parking on the road is fine. If it is easier to come from Exeter, drive into downtown Exeter, go right around the bandstand, and go west on 111, which is also Front Street (NOT 111A). Take 111 for approx. 3.5 miles, and South Road will be on your right at the top of a hill, right after you have passed a town marker for Kingston. Turn right on South Road. Drive 1.5 miles and we are the white farmhouse on the right, mailbox with #155 on the left. **Do not use MapQuest!! We share the same zip code as Kensington, which also has a South Road, leading to great confusion!!* In case you were wondering how the First Bees are doing J U N E 2 2, 2 0 0 9 A Bee-youtiful Thing: The First Honey Harvest From The White House Bee Hive
A Very Buzz worthy White House Event... The very first harvest of honey came out of the White House Bee Hive on June 10. Official White House beekeeper Charlie Brandts made the historic honey extraction mid-morning, and it was immediately bottled in sterilized containers. The honey has been used for White House meals, but not for the honey-laden recipes that were created during the big garden harvest event last Tuesday, when the cupcakes served at the celebratory picnic were made with honey, as was the salad dressing. By the way, this week just happens to be the third annual National Pollinator Week, which calls attention to the critical role bees play in the food chain. Mr. Brandts has worked at the White House for more than a quarter of a century as a carpenter. He became official beekeeper when chef Sam Kass, Food Initiative Coordinator, discovered he was a bee keeping enthusiast and asked Mr. Brandts to build and maintain the hive. Mr. Brandts is fairly new to bee keeping--he started a little more than three years ago--but he's rapidly become an expert. He previously told the media he started bee keeping at his own home as a way of both eating more healthfully and cutting down on grocery expenses. The White House Bee Hive sits on a tall stand and sits half-shaded by a tree, and is visible to visiting tourists from the street that runs behind the South Lawn. To gain access to the top of the beehive, Mr. Brandts places two boards between two sawhorses and stands on these, so he doesn't have to lean on the hive. (Editor: Bet that just got your mind off all the rain, didn t it?) Since February, Mr. Brandts has been very busy with bees elsewhere at the White House, too: At least three different migrating swarms have taken up residence, and Mr. Brandts is charged with removing them. No, he doesn't kill these; they are re-located. Still not sufficiently impressed with the media s understanding of beekeeping?? This should leave you scratching your head! Received via email from one of our members, Ernie Johnson: Monday, June 29, 2009 NEW YORK (AP) An urban bee-wrangler says a swarm of at least 8,000 honeybees will be getting a new home after causing a buzz of excitement on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Onlookers applauded as the New York Police Department's beekeeper, Officer Anthony Planakis, corralled the huge swarm Sunday on Lexington Avenue.
The bees had built a giant hive in a tree. When the queen went sightseeing, the entire swarm followed. Onlooker Doug Becker described a 3 foot column of bees. The tour group proceeded half a block before buzzing back to the hive. Planakis said the bees would be taken "to a farm in Connecticut to pollinate." (Editor s note: sure they will probably the same farm the family dog went to when I was a kid ) Last week, bee enthusiasts gathered on the steps of City Hall to push a bill that would legalize beekeeping in New York City. And now our monthly BEEKEEPER S INTERVIEW You never know where your beekeeping journey is going to take you. One day, you might find yourself photographing African bee hives being opened in Cape Town, South Africa. Or maybe you ll run 80-90 hives on local farms. You could become a distributor of bee supplies from Dadant, Mann Lake, or Brushy Mountain; you could have your own shop and sell woodenware (and all the accoutrements!) You could travel to Georgia and see packages of bees put together that you ll personally drive back to New England and hand over to new beekeepers who never know where their journey might take them. These are just some of Vinny (and Jan) Gaglione s beekeeping experiences, and it all started with a joke Jan played on Vinny Back in the late 70 s (or early 80 s) Jan, without telling her husband, signed him up for beekeeping school at the Essex County bee club. When Vinny got the letter confirming his attendance in the upcoming bee classes, he decided he d do it. He d grown up on a small farm in Wilmington, but had never kept bees. His first year, a fellow beekeeper sold him a hive that had been a swarm. By the second Spring, it was dead. He got another swarm, but the following year that hive was dead too. Turns out, he d originally been sold equipment that had housed foulbrood. There was only one thing to do~ burn the equipment and start over. By Vinny s eighth year of beekeeping, he had at least 25 hives. Back then, it was easy to make splits in the spring because hives would be boiling over with bees. In the late 1980 s varroa had become a
serious problem, and Massachusetts required a license to bring bees into the state (even though bees were stilling being sent by mail.) Vinny got the license, and people came to him for their bees. Around that time he also became a supplier for Dadant, a well-known beekeeping company in Ohio. These days, Vinny and Ben Chadwick make the drive to Rossman Apiaries in Georgia, where they bring back an average of 250 packages. Next year they plan on two trips and 700 packages! Vinny s having a special trailer made for the comfort of the bees while en route. The drivers, on the other hand, make pit stops only for gas, and that includes getting coffee and using the facilities too. In case you were wondering, it s a 23 hour trip one way. Later, he stopped being a Dadant dealer and went with Mann Lake, a company started by his friend Jack. Now Vinny also distributes for Brushy Mountain. Vinny s own supply company is called Crystal Bee Supplies. ( 978-535-1622, 12 Elginwood Road, W. Peabody, Ma. 01960) At his home, I didn t see a single crystal bee ornament, and asked him about it. Turns out you can see Crystal Lake from their house, hence the name. Jan, Vinny s wife of almost 50 years, is one of the best beekeepers he knows. He says she works mostly bare-handed in the hives, doesn t use much smoke, and rarely gets stung. She can spot a queen better than he can, and likes to take her time in the hives. They each work with customers and the bees, and have a real love for both (and each other, which explains 50 years together!) When I asked Vinny and Jan to tell me what are some of the biggest mistakes new beekeepers make, here s what they told me: 1. Opening the wrong end of the queen cage when hiving a new package, or replacing a queen. As Vinny said, new beekeepers can get so excited they sometimes take out the cork in the queen cage instead of putting a small hole in the nougat end. (I know from experience turns out it was a big oops. ) And if the nougat s soft, the bees will easily eat through the candy~ no hole is necessary which leads to. 2. Pushing the nougat up into the queen cage when trying to make a small hole in it. 3. Going into the hive too often, or not often enough. Always know why you re going into the hive. Don t just poke around. 4. Not waiting long enough for the queen to be released from the queen cage. It can sometimes take more than four days. When the beekeeper interferes, it can be disastrous for the queen. 5. Bothering the queen and/or the bees before the queen is released. (i.e. poking around in the hive ) 6. Pulling frames with no purpose. Know what you want to learn before you open the hive. While we talked, I wondered how Vinny, and Jan, had become so good at what they do. Vinny s answer? Learn by doing. And they do a lot! They belong to: Essex, Middlesex County, NH State, Ct. State, Empire State bee clubs, and are life members of E.A.S. (Eastern Apiculture Society), along with membership in Ma. Farm Bureau, Fruit Growers, American Honey Producers, and American Beekeeping
Federation. And they re active members, though they have to pick and choose which meetings to attend. In 2001, Vinny and Jan were part of the host group for the Massachusetts E.A.S. conference. Not only do they learn by attending meetings and conferences, Vinny teaches beekeeping classes at Essex County, and North Shore Community College. He learns about beekeeping techniques from travelling to other countries. They ve been on beekeeping tours to Panama, Costa Rica, South Africa, Ireland, Vancouver, Australia, and Ukraine. Being involved with beekeeping and farming organizations opens doors. When I asked Vinny how he found bee yards, he told me that in joining the Farm Bureau, farmers would ask him to keep bees on their property. He prefers farms that will also sell his honey. (Did I mention that he and Jan also bottle and sell their honey in at least a dozen locations?) Though the weather this year has been a problem (the locust flow and the linden flow are lost because of all the rain) Vinny thinks overall the bees are getting healthier. He s seen larger swarms coming out of the woods, and believes there are surviving feral hives. In 1991, Vinny s losses to varroa were devastating. He lost two/thirds of his apiaries. He does treat for mites, at the end of the (bee) year. Two years ago he used Apiguard, last year used Formic Acid, and will likely use Formic Acid again this year. Vinny s bees are Italians. As for special honey uses, Jan just takes a tablespoon of honey every night, and Vinny puts honey on his cereal in the morning. They use it in cooking, and mix it in yogurt. Make sure you check out E.A.S. s conference this year, being held in NY State. You can go to www.easternapiculture.org for more information and to register for either the short course or the entire conference, held August 3-7, 2009 in Ellicottville, N.Y. Take a tip from Vinny and Jan your journey just may start there! (Editor s note: Vinny and Jan Gaglione are good friends of Ben and Bev Chadwick, and have been coming to our meetings the past couple of months. They are two of the most knowledgeable and personable beekeepers, and you ll have the chance to talk with them about bees and travel at our potluck picnic we recommend it!!) After our discussion of presentations to the public on beekeeping at the June meeting, we thought you might be interested to see what one of our beekeepers is going to be presenting in Portsmouth. Please feel free to attend and/or tell your friends about it! July 30, Thursday, 7pm: Honeybees in Your Garden: Keeping or Attracting These Premier Pollinators
Amy Antonucci will talk about the goodness honeybees bring to your backyard garden and offer suggestions for plants that will attract them. She will discuss the biology and society of these fascinating creatures, giving you a peek into the hive. She will touch on the issues facing bees and other pollinators, why it matters to you and how you can help them. At the Portsmouth Public Library, Levenson Community Room, 175 Parrott Ave, Portsmouth NH. Free and open to the public. For more info contact: 603-427-1540 or smevans@cityofportsmouth.com Did you know?? A darkened enclosure is needed for efficient wax secretion~ worker wax glands secrete more wax and bees build more comb in darker sites compared to bees exposed to light. SPRING FEVER FARM Local Bee Supplies Ben & Bev Chadwick 49 Lane Drive, Alton, N.H. 03809 (603) 875-3544 Beekeeping tools, honey products, cases of assorted honey jars, books, protective clothing, etc. NH Distributors of Honey-B-Healthy and now a MANN LAKE Dealer! When ordering, call ahead 24 hours for products delivered to bee-meeting.