New River Valley Beekeepers' Association

As I write this announcement I am looking out the window at a forested mountainside and see that the buds on the soft maples are beginning to swell and turn red.  As difficult as this winter has been, spring is just around the corner and before long we will all have our hands full working our hives.

Continuing our objective to cover essential colony management topics this winter and early spring, this meeting will focus on understanding swarms. Swarming has become one of the main spring topics on the Hive message boards and a major source of frustration for many of us. A quick search on the internet yields a multitude of techniques for preventing swarms including the Pagdon, Heddon, Snelgrove, Demaree, Double Screen, and Checkerboard methods and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Rather than a mind-numbing discussion on all these methods, this presentation will cover why colonies swarm, how the process occurs, how to recognize a colony in danger of swarming, and why it is important to prevent swarms.  Finally we will discuss what does and what does not work to stop or prevent swarms.

This talk will be aimed at beginning beekeepers, but should provide some fresh ideas for even advanced members.

-Fred Jones, NRVBA President.

Please join us at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday 8th February 2018 at the Montgomery County Health and Human Services Building at 210 Pepper St., Christiansburg .

NRVBA February 2018 Meeting Agenda

1. What you should be doing with your bees
2. Discussion of Winter Losses
3. Business
   • Association queen purchase
   • Committee for NRVBA logo and t-shirt design
   • Committee for development of mentoring program
4. Fred’s Follies: A brief recap of January’s requeening program
5. Main Topic … “Swarms: What can go wrong when everything goes right”
6. Raffle:Note, there will be no intermission. Buy your tickets before the meeting or, quietly, any time during the meeting in the back of the room. Items will include:
   • 10 deep frames w/ plasticell foundation (unassembled)
   • 1-10 frame deep (unassembled)
   • 1-10 frame medium (unassembled)
   • 7 between frame beetle traps
   • 1-10 frame plastic hive top feeder
7. Close of formal meeting. This will be a time for refreshments, questions and  socializing. Please consider bringing something to eat or drink.

President-elect Fred Jones would like to share with you his vision for the NRVBA in 2018:

As president-elect of the NRVBA I would like to introduce myself and give a brief summary of what to expect in 2018.

To begin, I believe there is much we can learn by taking a lesson from the honeybees we all know and love.  Perhaps the single most important decision bees make comes when a swarm must choose a new home.  Research has proven that in a honeybee democracy only 3% to 5% of the population participate in that decision. Following that model, it is one of my goals to minimize the business portion of general meetings and leave most of those aspects up to the Board of Directors. I hope to make the meetings informative, fast paced, fun and much shorter. My thanks go to Jim Hill, our current president, for overseeing a much needed rewrite of the bylaws that should streamline our association and allow for these changes

The programs for winter and spring 2018 will have an emphasis on fundamental aspects of hive management.  These will build on Jerry Borger’s excellent beekeeping class and I believe will be of benefit to even our most experienced members.  The summer/fall programs will tend toward more advanced topics and subjects related to honeybees, but not necessarily to hive management.

I will begin each meeting with, “What should you be doing with your bees?.” This will not be a session to cover the problems of individual beekeepers, but a short summary of what our more experienced beekeepers are doing that month. This should be a terrific guide for newer members.

The raffle will continue, but tickets will be available before and throughout the meeting at a table in the back of the room. By eliminating an intermission and shortening the meetings I envision a post-meeting social gathering wherein new beekeepers might ask questions to more experienced members and the old-timers can swap new ideas.

While public speaking is not my strong suit, I am a good listener.  Suggestions and comments are always welcome. Together we can move the NRVBA forward as one of the strongest honeybee associations in the state.

Happy holidays to you all,  

Fred Jones