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Iowa Honey Producers Association |
The Buzz Newsletter June 2007 |
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A Word From The Iowa Honey Queen I had the opportunity to talk to two sixth grade
science classes at Newman Catholic School in Mason City for 40
minutes each. I was pleased to find out how much the students
already knew about pollination and honey bees. I handed out packets
of information that I put together for the students so they were
able to take the information home and teach their parents about
honeybees. I started out by talking about the benefits of local
honey and how important it is to read the label. I passed around
a jar of honey that I bought from the store that stated, "The
honey may be from Argentina, Canada or the United States,"
and also passed a jar of pure, natural local "IOWA"
honey and asked the students if they could tell a difference between
the honey by reading the labels. After doing this exercise they
all wanted to look at the label on their honey they had at home.
I was able to bring an observation hive and explain the roles
of the three types of bees that are found in the hive. I gave
away a 12oz. honey bear from Spring Valley Honey Farms to the
first person who found the queen bee. I passed around treats that
were made with honey, I was surprised to find out how many of
the students had never tried anything made with honey.
THE BEEYARD REPORT Adam came home to stay on May 8th. I finally got the grass mowed for the first time on the 12th. It was at least a foot tall. Mowed probably isn't a very apt term. It was more like thinning it out and bending it over a little. I usually turn the horses on it when I don't have time to mow. This spring has been so wet, I decided to keep them off the yard. The hoof prints really cut things up. It makes the croquet course much more challenging. You can hit the perfect shot and have the ball take a 90 degree turn when it hits one of the holes. We were supering at this time (mid May) last year. We haven't even thought about it this year. Things are about two weeks behind where they have been the last two or three years. We are late getting the queen yard started. We didn't get our breeders brought home until the 12th. It has been so wet, we haven't been able to get to a lot of the yards. We had two yards decimated by mites that still had boomer colonies left. We bought those home to put in the breeding pool. Is there some mite resistance there or was it just the luck of the draw? I don't know but they have had mite pressure for sure. Adam did his first graft on the 15th. We tried MiteAway pads in a few yards this spring. They definitely inhibit egg laying for the first week or ten days. I thought I was having massive queen failure in one of the yards but they came out of it when the acid dissipated. We are finding very few mites overall. The most I have gotten on an ether roll is one. Jay Vilwock from Channel 5 was here on the 11th. He wanted to do a piece on the disappearing bees. If you give Jay a situation he can instantly give you four or five verbal images to describe it. TV news is all about sound bites but I thought the piece they did was pretty good. The best one was on the six o'clock news. There was a shorter version at ten. Jay had done some homework on the internet. One explanation he found for CCD was "Bee Rapture"--the bees were being called to the heavens. Another explanation blamed it all on Kevin Federline. That was my favorite. We have had really good luck with sales. I had to buy a few barrels of honey to give myself a cushion. When we had 120 barrels stacked up in the warehouse last fall, I was wondering what I was going to do with all of it. We are still pulling brood and making splits in mid May. The early splits were three frame. Adam and Alex making them with four frames now. We usually run our splits as singles but this year we are giving second stories to the early splits. I need to get the brood boxes out of the warehouse and I don't think we are going to see a flow for a while. It also makes for a lot less work in the fall. I hope everybody has a decent year. Submitted by Phil Ebert
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