The club had a display booth at the opening day of the Person County Farmers Market. On hand to staff the booth were President, Mary Deitz and VP, Todd walker. Members Inge Kautzmann and Gary Deitz also helped out. Special thanks to Tom and Linda Savage for providing the tables.
There was lots of interest especially from the kids. They were all so knowledgeable and asked great questions. Everyone had a great time and we were asked to do another presentation for the Farmers Market later in the year.
Here are some pics from the event.
The PCBA Bee School ended with a trip to a local Apiary for some hands on experience. After nine weeks the students put into practice what they had learned during class. We had a great turn out. The event included a pot luck lunch and lots of great raffle prizes.
A special thanks goes out to the following who helped to support the school.
Dadant
Miller Bee Supply
Brushy Mountain Bee Farm
Here are some photographs from the day and thanks again to all who participated.
We have over 40 students this year from all over, representing 5 different counties, including 1 from out of state. Thanks to all who’ve joined us this year!
Here are some pictures from the first few weeks of class.
Have you ever thought about keeping bees, but never knew where to begin? Are you a current beekeeper who wants to build general beekeeping skills? Do you have an interest in learning about this ancient and environmentally beneficial craft? If so, do we have an opportunity for you!
- 10-week beekeeping course beginning Thursdays January 19th
- Knowledgeable instructors will cover the A BEE C’s of beekeeping
- Hands-on demonstration field day upon conclusion of the course
- Registration fee for entire course is just $35
Registration includes course materials, textbook, and a one-year membership to PCBA. Pre-registration is not required but is recommended, as space is limited. To reserve a spot in class, contact the extension office at 336-599-1195 or send your name, address, telephone number and email to debbie_harrelson@ncsu.edu.
Where: Person County Office Building, Room 165, 304 S. Morgan St, Roxboro NC 27573
Times: Thursday for 10 weeks beginning January 19, 2012, 7-9pm
Entomologist, Dick Rogers was the guest speaker for our November meeting. Dick has 35+ years experience in apiculture and the bulk of his research is focused on conducting bee health investigations.
He is currently with Bayer CropScience in Research Triangle Park, NC. His role at BCS is to plan and coordinate bee studies, continue honey bee health investigations and research, contribute to finding solutions to bee health issues, and to be an internal and external resource on pollination and apiculture.
He has traveled much of North American conducting studies on bee health and he shared with us some of his research findings over the years. He prefers the term MVCAS over CCD when attempting to explain colony loss, MVCAS stands for Multiple and Various Causative Agents Syndrome. His research considers the many variables of what can cause colonies to ‘mysteriously’ fail. These losses cannot be contributed to one single event, disease or pest. It is the combination of these factors in relation to the existing health of the hive that gives us the answers to MVCAS.
He has created a fairly accurate mortality predictor based on a bee health rating system that he developed. This system considers the needs of the bees and the factors that affect them. Bee needs are food (water, protein and carbohydrates), shelter and safety and the factors that can affect bee health are environmental, management and in-hive issues. Having an IPM (Integrated Pest Management) system focused on what he has coined as the 3M’s is key to the survival of our bees.
- Monitoring – must be done consistently and for many things
- Management – of the bees needs for food, shelter and safety
- Mite Control – specifically Varroa. Some research studies suggest that honey bee brood development is taking longer than normal. Because Varroa reproduces on the honey bee brood, this slowing down of development gives new mites more time to develop to maturity and therefore may be contributing to more rapid build up of Varroa populations in some hives.
See an example bee health rating in the illustrations below.
These results represent a control group from one of his studies. Most of us understand that good bee health is critically important as we get closer to fall. But seeing the information presented in this way clearly shows just how important a consistently followed IPM program is to the survival of our bees.
With a 50-60% winter loss being the average, Dick stated that colonies will only survive if well managed. Well said Dick, well said.
Mead makers and owners of Starrlight Mead, Becky and Ben Starr visited our club in
October to share with us how to make mead (honey wine). Ben and Becky have been making mead for over 7 years and what started as a passion evolved into a business a little over a year ago.
Their mead is award winning and took best of show at a 2006 international mead festival in a field of over 200 entries. Ben shares his expertise and love of brewing by conducting demonstrations and workshops on mead making in the local community. They also organize and conduct the local Mead Day celebration each August (since 2005) and are a key part of the product tasting team for mead reviews on Gotmead.com. Becky worked with Chatham Hill Winery for 2 years learning tasting room and wine club management. They are also members of the Chatham County Beekeepers Association, and the NC Winegrowers Association.
Mead is fermented honey that is diluted typically with water and has yeast added to it. As Ben explained all it really is, is a controlled spoilage. 65 gallons of honey makes a 260 gallon batch of mead. The type of honey and yeast used will have an impact on the flavor. Other additives are also included to bring about various desired flavors such as oranges, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and raisins. The possibilities are endless. Becky shared with us one of their new creations that included peppers! The slightly sweet flavor combined with a bit of heat from the pepper was delightful.
The length of the commercial fermentation process depends and can take from 4 weeks to 4 months. A home brew, due to the lack of temperature controls, can take 6 months to a year. So for those of us wanting to give it a go, we’ll need to start now with a batch that we can drink this time next year. Also for those of us who want to give it a try, Ben suggested a book by Ken Schramm “The Complete Meadmaker”.
For more information about mead and Ben and Becky’s meadery visit their website at www.starrlightmead.com
Way to go PCBA on bringing home the Blue Ribbon from the 2011 North Carolina State Fair! The booth theme was “Plant to Plate, How Honey Bees Impact What We Eat”.
Honey bees are responsible overall for the pollination of 33% of the food we eat representing billions of dollars in annual revenue. With crops like apples, cantaloupes, cucumbers, blueberries and almonds relying 90% on honey bee pollination the loss of the honey bee would result in an almost complete elimination of these crops.
We also wanted to illustrate how various agricultural products are pollinated by honey bees. We did this by creating a map of few pollination trucking routes. It is not uncommon for bees from our state to be trucked to California to pollinate the almond fields.
Our plant to plate theme didn’t just revolve around food, without honey bees the flowers and candles we enjoy as part of our table settings would be greatly affected as well. We showed these impacts by photographing breakfast and dinner meals with and without the benefit of honey bee pollination. The results are staggering as illustrated below.
Breakfast With Honey Bees ©Michael Todd Walker
Breakfast Without Bees ©Michael Todd Walker
Dinner With Bees ©Michael Todd Walker
Dinner Without Bees ©Michael Todd Walker
In addition to the club’s first place win for the booth here are a few individual club member results.
3rd Place Amber Honey Entry – Todd Walker
3rd Place Honey Plants Poster – Geneva Green
5th Place Bee Product Gift Basket – Geneva Green
5th Place Cosmetics Hand Cream – Geneva Green
The success of Person County’s 2011 State Fair booth entry was very much a group effort that resulted in a first place blue ribbon!
From set up to blue ribbon, here are some photos of our club’s booth for the 2011 NC State Fair.
Dr. Juliana Rangel of NCSU spoke at the PCBA September meeting. Dr Rangel gave a 
presentation on the relationship between honey bee health and pollination in Agro-ecosystems. Some of the topics she discussed were.
- Importance of honey bees as pollinators, value of honey bee pollination services in the US, and some definitions of ecosystems, agro-ecosystems, and ecosystem services (pollination being an important ecosystem service to humans)
- Basics of pollination biology, morphological adaptations of honey bees for pollination
- Economic impact and benefits of honey bee pollination nationwide and in NC
- Costs of honey bee pollination and of lack-there-of (pests and pathogens to honey bees and their impact on honey bee health and productivity).
- Honey bee health vs. ecosystem health
She also shared a few very interesting stats:
- 75% of flowering plants rely on animal pollination
- 33% of the food we consume is pollinated by honeybees
- Multi-million dollar crops such as Almonds, Apples and Blueberries are 90% reliant on honey bee pollination.
- Annual value of honey bee pollination on agricultural products is about 15 billion dollars.
Dr. Rangel is a postdoctoral fellow at NCSU. She was awarded one of only 15 National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology titled “Queen supersedure in honey bees: how and why do workers replace their mother queen with a sister queen?” The award is for $189,000 over three years. Juliana’s research addresses the collective decision-making of honey bee colonies over colony level reproduction, which has important pragmatic implications for the apicultural industry in maintaining stable and productive colonies.
Our guest speaker, David Langham demonstrated for the group how to make various types of wax products, candles, ornaments, lights, etc. The equipment and gear he brought illustrated the process from beginning to end.
He started by discussing the three main opportunities for collecting wax; comb from die outs, cappings and burr comb. He then showed us how his homemade wax melter worked and explained the difference between his solar wax melter and the water method. When submitting wax products for competition such as the state fair he stressed that the wax should be filtered several times to remove impurities.
David also explained how the size wick you use will vary depending on the size mold you choose. David brought a bear/skep candle mold that he had made earlier in the day and showed us how to remove it from the molding. He also poured wax into molds during the meeting and made angel ornaments that cooled in time for us to see the finished product. The last wax demo he did was showing us how to create a wax bowl buy using a water balloon filled with cold water that he dipped several times into the melted wax. He added some pressed flowers collected from Alaska for a beautiful effect. The demo was great. David’s enthusiastic approach was inspiring and left many with the desire to start collecting burr comb immediately!
