Page 4

IHPA Award Nominations

It is time to think of deserving beekeepers and friends of the association that should receive one of the Awards that the IHPA presents at the Annual Meeting banquet. Please review the categories and submit your suggestions along with a short letter explaining why you feel that this candidate should receive an award. The categories that we usually present are as follows:

1. Pioneer Award- for having been involved for 50 years or more and still active in beekeeping.

2. Distinguished Service Award- for assisting other beekeepers, willing to share information, and /or serving the association.

3. Eduation 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 or 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 the the state fair, successfully keeping bees for at least one season including wintering, writing, making a float for a parade, speaking, etc.

If you would like to nominate someone, please send the information to me by the deadline of September 30th. :

Louise Johnson
34147 310th Street
Guttenberg, IA 52052
(563) 252-2340
louisej@alpinecom.net

THE BEEYARD REPORT

Things started to turn around in the middle of May. By the beginning of June the bees were looking pretty good. All of the good ones were supered by the 10th. It seems like every yard has three or four that are queenless or we are waiting to see if the queens mated. We got a good three weeks of dandelions but then it turned wet again. I’m pretty cold blooded but I usually take my long underwear off by Memorial Day. As we moved into June, I still had it on.

Adam pulled a frame or two of brood from the good colonies when he supered. That’s what he used to stock his mating nucs. We are over a month late is getting that up and running. The first lot of queens tried to mate during the monsoons. The results were predictable. I’ve turned down orders for at least 200 queens.

The first lot of bees coming out of the apples was super. We expected the same from the second lot. After selling off half of our queens, we didn’t think we were going to have enough. It was a mad scramble to find more. When we actually got the second lot of bees back home, they were crap. We wound up knocking them down into small units just to use up the queens.

The packages look good. They were supered at the end of May. Most of them will be doubles. One yard started slow and never caught up. Adam left most of that yard as singles. We liked the way the 4# pkgs. with two queens worked out. We usually direct release our package queens but with the 4#, we want to slow down release until the bees are sure which queen is theirs.

We always have a lot of ticks but this year they seem to be gravitating toward my private parts. It’s a little disconcerting.

We expected to have the addition to our building completed by now. The reality is that we had the footings poured by June 15th. The weather has the builder really jammed up. I don’t know what we are looking at for a completion date. I can tell already that the building won’t be large enough.

We have seen a number of mites in the drone brood. I was hoping mite numbers would be lower this year given the late start of brood rearing. We are going to have to monitor mite fall as the summer progresses.

We have lost a number of yards the last two years. Land has changed hands and a lot of ground has come out of CRP. It’s only going to get harder to find places to put bees.

I was interviewed by the Iowa Radio Network and also the Quad City Times. A number of people said they heard me on the radio. I have no idea how the newspaper article turned out. If anybody in eastern Iowa saw it, let me know.

Let’s hope for a good crop. We have a great clover bloom now. Our yards around Grinnell are starting to bring home honey. Nothing is happening any place else at mid June. Beans are going to be blooming through August. That is a sword that cuts both ways, however. They start spraying pre-bloom and it doesn’t stop.

I actually had a good time at Anthony’s wedding. Usually, those events are just painful. I wasn’t expecting many people on the plane to Bozeman but it was full. I had no clue how many tourists went out there. I wasn’t all that excited about the prospect of seeing Yellowstone either. When I finally figured out my baseball career wasn’t going anywhere, I spent a number of years living out of a bag while I took the world tour. I didn’t think Yellowstone would be more impressive than anything else I had seen. By the time I left, I was totally enthralled. It was well worth the trip.

Have a great summer. It has finally arrived.

Submitted by Phil Ebert