The Buzz Newsletter

August 2005

 

 

Page 4

Annual Awards Nominations

Please send me your nominations for 2005. I have a couple of late nominations from 2004 that I held over for 2005. Please don't procrastinate, get your nominations in early! Thank you.

Mark Tintjer 25711 L Ave.
Hubbard, IA. 50122
or e-mail mltintjer@netins.net

We will not necessarily give all of these award in any one year.
1.Pioneer Award- for having been involved for 50 years or more & still active in beekeeping.
2.Distinguished Service Award- for assisting other beekeepers, willing to share information, and/or serving the association.
3.Education Award- teaching beekeeping classes, speaking at service clubs, giving presentations to school children or speaking about beekeeping on radio or T.V.
4.Promotions Award- for promoting honey and beekeeping, promotions for the state association of promoting their own product.
5.Friendship Award- for being a friend of the association. This could be someone who has displayed at the annual IHPA trade show, a state official who has assisted or encouraged beekeeping, someone outside our industry of producing honey.

6.Youth Award- for a young person who has shown commendable involvement in such things as helping at the state fair, successfully keeping bees for at least one season including wintering, writing, making a float for a parade, speaking, etc.

Submitted by Mark Tintjer

 

The Beeyard Report

Well, Crap!! One of the extractors is broken down. Anthony went to work at 7:00 AM and it quit on the first load. The speed control is haywire. I called Dadant’s metal plant and Kent told me how to adjust the rheostats in the speed control. After I did that, I went from very slow speed to no speed. Dadants are going to send me another one, but we are pretty much done for the day. With only one extractor, extracting cost goes from four cents per pound to eight cents. That really bites.

We have had trouble with the on-off switch on this same extractor. It’s not sealed and honey gets into it. Then it doesn’t work any more. We have had to take it apart and clean it out a couple of times a year. I was complaining about this to Pat Ennis one time. He suggested we put a plastic bag over it. I did this and, so far, it has taken care of the problem.

The honey flow has been phenomenal. It reminds me of 1988, although, I think 88 was even hotter and drier. We are on barrel #30 already (July 12th). Usually, it’s a struggle to get thirty before school starts. I’m pretty much overwhelmed with help. Alex and Adam have been supering and pullng honey. Anthony is on the extractors and the neighbor boy comes to bottle. It all came too fast for me to handle it. I hope there is some money left over for me when it’s all done.

Our queen rearing venture has worked out well. Almost everything has mated, with the exception of some swarm cells the boys brought home. Adam hung the cells in the nucs in cell protectors. For some reason the bees ate down through the top of the cells before the queens emerged. He said this always happens with the cells hung in protectors, Even when they allow the queens to emerge, they chew out the tops of the cells afterward. I think he only got three queens out of that lot. The grafted stock has done well. I hadn’t anticipated the mating yard turning into a brood factory. Most of the queens have had the opportunity to lay for two or three week before we did anything with them. The heat, coupled with an outstanding flow, put everything on the fast tract. We have had lots of brood to boost slow colonies and start new ones. The extra queens have enabled us to keep our hive count up. I haven’t figured up the cost of this operation yet. We have quite a bit of equipment tied up in it. If the numbers come out, we are going to grow it next year.

I always tell people that it’s a rare event when you get bees to come through an excluder to get on foundation. I had this happen recently. We caught a giant swarm in one of our yards. There were so many bees, we had trouble getting them all in one box. We had some cut comb boxes with foundation on the truck. We stuck one on top over an excluder just to get the bees inside. The bottom box was a standard deep with two frames of comb and seven frames of foundation. We took the swarm to another yard and set them down. I checked them a week later and all of the bees were in the bottom box. When I went back after the second week, the cut comb box was full of honey. I had to give them a second box of cut comb foundation. The wax drawing capabilities of swarms is truly amazing.

Submitted by Phil Ebert