The Buzz Newsletter

December 2004

 

 

Page 4

December Ramblings by The Old Man

The annual meeting was held last week and there were some very good speakers. I feel the program chairperson did and excellent job of planning a very informative meeting. Bill Ruzicka’s talk on how to use formic acid for control of mites, both varroa and tracheal; was clear and to the point that you must follow the directions that come with the application pads if you want the treatment to be successful. This just goes to point out that when you try a product and don’t get good results, you need to go back and reread the instructions and see if you did things the way the producer of the product recommended. So often when something fails to do the job as advertised we condemn the product when the real problem is we didn’t follow the instructions.

George Clutter from West Virginia gave a very informative presentation on how to work with the legislators to get funding for their apiary program. This couldn’t have been at a more appropriate time as we are certainly going to need to contact our representatives in the Iowa legislator to fund the apiary program this year so we can at least have the necessary inspections that we need to control diseases and to put together a training program to teach beekeepers how to detect diseases and mites and to be not just good beekeepers, but the best beekeepers in the United States.

I want to thank Liz Vaenoski for the beautiful lap quilt that she sent to the Iowa Honey Producers for the Honey Queen Auction. She sent a duplicate quilt to Wisconsin and Iowa with the understanding that the state that raised the most money at auction for the quilt Liz would then donate an additional $50. I am afraid that Wisconsin won that auction as I was told they bid $45 dollars more for the quilt than Iowa could raise. Thanks for the quilt Liz and all of your support of the Iowa Honey Queen Program.

We are having some beautiful fall weather here in the middle of November with the temperatures being in the high 50’s and low 60’s, is more like September weather. We can be thankful for every day that we have nice weather. This means a great chance for our bees to survive the winter for those of us that over winter our bees here in Iowa. Be sure to record this unusual weather in your diary or bee record book so that next year when you have a severe hard cold November you can recall why the winter was so hard on your bees.

Now is a good time to get out the past years magazines that you haven’t read all of the articles in and to read them and also reread some of the articles that you did read and make notes about if you want to try them next year in your beekeeping operation. It is also a good time to write that article that you have been planning on writing for the Buzz and send it to either Phil Ebert or to Alex Ebert for publishing in the Buzz. You never know just how helpful it is until it is in print and someone reads it and puts it to use. A very simple thing that you think is not important may be just the thing to help someone understand how to do a seemingly difficult task.

I have been busy this fall running a new water line for rural water into the house where my wife’s oldest brother lives. This means we won’t have to haul drinking water to the farm for him now. The old well was tested a number of years ago and was high in nitrates and bacteria. He is handicapped and has to spend his days in a wheel chair. He is a ham operator and has been one for over 30 years. He lives by himself in the farm home where they moved to in the mid 50’s. We have to keep the yard mowed in the summer and when we are out there on nice days we get him out and loaded on his golf cart and he drives it around on the farm. I raise a garden out on the farm and this year we had a good crop of potato’s and tomato’s with frost coming while there were still a good couple of bushels of green tomato’s on the vines. We had eaten, canned and made into juice lots of tomato’s as well as pickled some of the green tomato’s and had fried green tomato’s to eat a couple of times. I keep about half of my bees out at the farm and have done so for over 30 years. I generally get a good crop of honey of a nice light golden color. It is not a boom or bust yard but is very consistent in producing a good crop most years. Before I had bees of my own on this farm, my father in law kept bees and he had bees for about 30 some years. There is still a section box wax installer fastened to the wall in the shop, which was the old house before the current house was built in the 1930’s. I hope to expand the garden next year to include some pumpkins and more squash and some melons. I have a start of blackberries and maybe I can get some currents and gooseberries going in future years. Have a joyous holiday season and I hope to greet you all next year.