The Buzz Newsletter

September 2007

 

 

Page 9

THE BEEYARD REPORT

We have sold around 150 queens. This wouldn't make a pimple on a queen producers behind but it's quite a few for us. It pays for operating the yard. It's rather picturesque when everything is in bloom. It's in an open area at the bottom of a slope. There is a nice stand of trefoil and dutch clover intermigled with some crown vetch. The mating nucs are set up like a letter "D". There is a straight line of them along the fence line on the left. The the loop on the letter "D" is on the right. There's a lane for the horses to run through so they can go to the top of the hill and snort at me to show me show me who is boss. This time of year the ragweed takes over. It's not very attractive.

It looks like we are going to have a decent honey crop. After having two once in a lifetime years back to back, anything less is a come down. We have pulled 1/3 of our yards and have 35 barrels extracted. We have pulled the best yards . The others won't yield as much. We are anticipating something around 70 to 80 barrels. The first ten barrels were some of the lightest honey we have ever had. Then it started to darken. We have four barrels that look like root beer that came from a yard near Montezuma. I have no idea what the floral source is. Once we got into another area the honey lightened up but it's still a lot different in flavor from what we usually get. I'm not sure how much basswod honey we got. Sometimes I could smell it in the boxes we were extracting but it didn't come through in the flavor of the honey.

The bees are now working the common ragweed that grows around the buildings on our home place. In years past, I have only seen bumble bees on it. This year there are no bumblebees and the honeybees are all over it. They will work it immediately after rain and will start on it as soon as it's full daylight.. We have another common plant on the edges of our yard that I can't identify. It grows 2' to 4' tall and has spiny tips around the leaves. It has small yellow flowers about the size of a nickle. The stem is fleshy and the horses like to eat it. I always look at the weed display at the fair but it wasn't one that was included. I was able to learn the difference between velvetleaf and cocklebur.

I was on the balcony at the Ag Building one day during the fair. I happened to look down to the lower level and saw Chelsa Bronnenberg getting her picture taken with Hillary Clinton. It looked like Hillary had a huge crowd following her. As she moved away, some of the people followed her but most of the lineup was waiting to see the butter cow. Hillary is fairly close to me politically but I can't get very excited about her.

I ran into Taylor and Crystal Petersen when I was strolling past the FFA building. They were in the beekeeping class that Margaret Hala and I taught in Marshalltown last winter. Taylor had a notebook on display that chronicled her beekeping experience. I was impressed. There were also a couple of other beekeeping displays that had been FFA projects.

Be alert to the possibilty of small hive beetles in your operation. They are in the state. It's just a matter of time until they get spread around.

Summer is drawing to a close. Anthony has returned from his summer in Yellowstone and is student teachng already. Alex and Adam made a trip to Colorado Springs where Alex threw the discus in an event like the Iowa games except it was on a national basis. They took in the local attactions and had a good time. Eric spent his time in summer school in Iowa City. I pretty much stayed on the old homestead. I hope everyone had a good summer.

Submitted by Phil Ebert

Annual Meeting Cost

Every year there is talk that the annual meeting needs to move out of Marshalltown. It has been a topic at several board meetings. The bottem line is that Marshalltown is a very economic place to have a meeting and it is centrally located. We get a lot of extras that we don't have to pay for. The staff at the meeting site knows what we need and they take care of it. It takes a lot of stress off the person running the meeting. Booking a location in Des Moines or somewhere comparable would cost over twice as much. All the booking gets us is a meeting room. If we want vendor space we pay extra. We have to pay extra for tables and other amentities. We have book a higher number of meals for the banquet. You, the members, would be looking at higher registration fees and a much higher banquet cost. If you look at the cost of meetings in adjoining states, ours is pretty economical. We still get a lot of complaints about the cost.

If there is someone out there who wants to look into having a meeting at some other location, put together a package and present it to the board. Personally, I would be happy to go someplace new but I don't want to shoot the IHP in the financial foot to do it.

Submitted by Phil Ebert