Capital Area Beekeepers’ Association Newsletter www.capitalareabeekeepers.org BEE TALK@ May Meeting The monthly meeting The May meeting is this Friday, May 8 at 7 pm. Meetings are held at the South Congregational Church on Pleasant Street in Concord. Speaker: Gary Neilson, entomologist from JP Pest Services – will speak about identifying honey bees vs, yellow jackets and removing swarms. Break: During the break the club provides coffee and punch and members are encouraged to bring a snack to share with your fellow beekeepers. Raffle: Don’t forget the raffle – bring a few dollars to buy some tickets and bring along something for the raffle table. Things for the raffle table can include bee related items but don’t need to be – last month the coveted items seemed to be the John Deere hats! This is a great place to bring those unwanted gifts you receive…. Friday, May 8 at 6:30pm Featuring: Fred Martin Do you ever feel like you want to ask a question but don’t have the chance? We are going to try something new this month and give people the opportunity to ask questions in a smaller forum. Before the meeting from 6:30 to 7:00 we will have someone in the chapel available to answer questions in a smaller group setting. This month Fred Martin, one of our mentors and the vice president of newest club in the state, Winnepausaukee Beekeepers, will be in there to answer all your questions. CABA SPRING WORKSHOP cancelled There has not been enough interest in the workshop this year so it was deceided to cancel this event. Appologies to those who wanted to attend. Coming in June JUNE 12th – Ken Kuhn will discuss how to determine if you have honey to take from your hives and the different ways to get the honey out of the hive. Jean Chase, Briajean Acres will explain how to make creamed honey. May 2015 July This July marks a major milestone for our club. It has been five years since an idea to form a club in the Concord area developed into the club you see today. With a little help from the state club to get the word out and with some advertising in local papers we had 17 people at our first meeting. As celebration of that milestone we have booked well known beekeeper and author Marina Marchese to come talk about her books and teach us the art of honey tasting. We will need 4 to 6 different honeys to taste so if anyone wishes to donate a jar of honey for the tasting let Deb know. As part of the tasting we will have crusty bread crackers, cheese, fresh or dried fruits or nuts and flat or sparkling water. So that we may all enjoy the evening there will be NO business meeting. May Capital Area Beekeepers’ Association 2015 Newsletter www.capitalareabeekeepers.org EDUCATIONAL AUGUST Hive Raffle August is another big month for us! AUGUST 2nd is our annual cookout held at the Lawler Farm in Bow. This year we will have Jim Tew here as a speaker. The following info was taken from “About the author” from his newest book. We sold so many tickets for the hive raffle that we were able to raffle off two nucs in addition to the hive! The winners were Melissa Laverick, Michael King and Elise Gauthier. Congratulations! Discover Wild New Hampshire ` What a wonderful day we had this year at Discover Wild New Hampshire!! Just under 7000 people attended the event Thank you to all that attended and helped ! SWARM CHASERS It is time again to compile a list of members who want to be called if someone in their area has a swarm that needs to be removed. If you are interested let Randy know. James E. Tew has been keeping bees for over 40 years. He has a Ph.D. in Entomology and is currently a Consulting Professor at Auburn University, where he conducts beekeeping educational programs and maintains social media systems that support the Alabama beekeeping industry. Recently retired from The Ohio State University, where he worked for 33 years as an Associate Professor focusing on pollination ecology and the use of honeybees and native bees as pollination agents, James gives lectures and workshops for beekeepers in the US and UK, runs the website One Tew Bee (www.onetew.com), and has written numerous books, including Wisdom for Beekeepers, as well as articles for Bee Culture magazine. BEE TALKS The club receives a fair amount of requests to provide talks about bees from garden clubs, schools, home school programs, kids programs and more. We are in the process of developing a program to include in the educational trunk that anyone who borrows the trunk will have access to. If anyone has done some research for a program that you have given and would like to add to the club curriculum please contact Jude Hamel as she has agreed to prepare it. Thanks to Jude for offering to put this together! May Capital Area Beekeepers’ Association 2015 Newsletter www.capitalareabeekeepers.orgMembers wishing to use the MEMBER GUIDELINES When we formed this club 5 years ago the general agreement by all was that Capital Area Beekeepers Association should be fun and educational for all members and a way to educate the local community on the importance of honey bees. The executive Board discussed at length the need to have guidelines in response to some concerns we have recently encountered We on occasion receive an email from a member wanting us to pass along information to our members. There may be times when we as a committee feel that that information is not appropriate for the club to take a stand on and developed the following statement to address that: CABA was started out of an interest in honey bees and beekeeping. We are a nonprofit 501c3 organization that promotes education around honey bees and beekeeping. In recent years Colony Collapse Disorder has brought attention to honey bees and beekeepers and a variety of hypotheses regarding the cause of the problem. Without conclusive research available that clearly identifies the cause of CCD, CABA cannot cite a specific cause nor offer any solutions to the problem. We encourage our members to research for themselves the variety of explanations that have been offered for CCD as well as the impact that CCD can have but we ask that the CABA name not be brought into public controversy. Capital Area Beekeepers name or logo on their own website or materials. It was felt that the club should not be linked to facebook pages or websites. The CABA logo should not be used unless permission is granted by the CABA Executive Board. Vendors wishing to set up and sell products at meetings CABA does not offer exclusive rights to any vendors to sell at our meetings. We believe it benefits members to have access to vendors at our meetings Vendors should be selling agricultural or bee related items and must first request permission from the board to set up and sell at meetings.