The Buzz Newsletter

December 2005

 

 

Page 3

Featured Beekeeper of the Month

This month our featured beekeepers are a husband and wife team from Des Moines. Melanie and Duane Bower operate Bower Southside Honey. Melanie worked with Bob Cox at the Wallace Building and saw his bee items every day. Beekeeping looked more and more interesting so Melanie and her husband attended Bob’s beekeeping class at the Botanical Center in Des Moines and became beekeepers. They enjoy working with bees, extracting honey, candle making, and wax art. They are content maintaining two colonies at this time. Melanie and Duane are members of the Iowa Honey Producers and attend the annual meeting. Melanie is also the superintendent of the apiary department at the Iowa State Fair.

They tell us they don’t have any really interesting experiences in beekeeping yet except for some don’ts.

Don’t wear sandals while working bees.

Don’t leave an empty hive closed up because you can get wax moths.

Don’t tilt a half-full super, you get damaged frames and honey all over when the frames slide out of the super.

Good advice. Some of us have been there and done that. Thanks for your story Melanie and Duane. Keep enjoying those bees.

Melanie and Duane Bower’s hives are well protected from weather and intruders.

Submitted by Ron Wehr

Indian Creek Nature Center 2005 Beekeeping class

The Indian Creek Nature Center completed its Bee keeping class of 2005 with a day of extracting honey and covering fall management and winterization of the hives. This is the 12th year of the class.