Good Day to All;
We had a lively meeting on Tuesday, 15 November as over 25 attended at the Old Perry Courthouse in beautiful downtown Perry, Ga.
As usual, Hazel McCurdy read the minutes of the Oct meeting and Kelly Hillis gave us a finance report of our on hand cash balance of $701.25.
We discussed everyone bringing some light finger foods for a Christmas Social for our next meeting on December 20. Everyone agreed. So please plan to attend and bring some goodies to share.
We also announced that the staff at Georgia Veterans State Park were taking such good care of their bees that they were able to harvest some honey and have already sold it all under the label of "Bee-29 Honey". As you all know, we sort of sponsored the park and started the bee keeping program there this year. Randall Meeks, the Park Manager, is planning on having public bee programs there soon. As a side note, the SOWEGA Beekeepers have started a beekeeping program at Cheehaw park in Albany and it is reported that they are doing well. After all the administrative stuff was taken care of, we moved into our program.
"Tools of the trade" was the primary topic of this month's meeting.
I brought in a Refractometer and we discussed the use, importance of knowing the h20 content of your honey and demonstrated it for the group. We passed it around for everyone to see how it read the h20 level of the honey sample that was used.
Kelly Hillis brought in a BeeVac and discussed its use when capturing a feral colony of bees. It certainly makes the it sooooooooooo much easier and safer when claiming "free bees".
Jessie McCurdy, who everyone knows builds his own hives from scratch, brought in some nails he has found in trees that will eat up any saw blade on the market. His point was to be very careful when milling raw wood. We are all trying to find ways to save dollars, but don't skip safety in your pursuit!
Bill Tamboli, the "BeeVue" guy, brought in one of his BeeVues. It is actually a framed top with plexiglass to view the colony and their activities without opening the hive. It comes with top feeders that keep the feed from freezing, robbing, keeps it on top of the cluster when they really need it. He also discussed "Hop-Guard" for mite treatment, and showed us how effective it was. It is available in the Mann Lake catalog.
At the end, we had our raffle as usual with about 5 or 6 prizes. That really is a primary fund raiser for us, so please bring something each meeting to share. Some more popular prizes were pies and cakes that don't seem to be there any more. Come back pies!
Our next meeting will be 20 Dec..............Happy Thanksgiving! Bear
0 comments:
Post a Comment