The Bee Line
Greetings Fellow Beekeepers,
Well, it’s officially Spring. You probably thought it came early since we had such a warm February. I was surprised to see the bees foraging early last month; a glimpse of the season to come. However, Mother Nature seemed to have picked a fight with Old Man Winter: the last day of winter brought us a brief snow shower, at least in Chesapeake. Thankfully, all that is past us and we can look forward to some nice warm days ahead. You may have noticed some dead bees in front of the hive that made the ultimate sacri-fice trying to keep the expanding brood warm during the recent cold snap; hopefully you did not lose an entire hive.
We need MENTORS!!! With the recent students eager to get started in beekeeping, we need your help. You do not have to be an entomology grad student to be an effective mentor; you only need to be a year ahead of your student. And nothing prohibits you from reaching out to your mentor when you are asked a question you cannot answer. That arrangement works out well because both of you benefit from the experience. Please consider giving the gift that keeps on giving – knowledge. Share what worked, what didn’t, and what you plan on trying in the future.
If you feel you need to freshen up on your beekeeping knowledge, please consider volunteering at one of our up-coming events. There are plenty of beekeepers with all experience levels present and it’s a great opportunity to ask them questions. It’s always interesting to hear some of the questions from the public too, especially from the little ones. Consider volunteering a few hours, and be sure to see the articles inside this issue. Remember, volunteering has its perks!
Thanks,
Nick
Words from the President
Meeting: Monday, April 10, 2017 at 7:00 PM
Location: Towne Hall, left wing of Towne Bank located at 137 Mt. Pleasant Rd.,
Chesapeake, VA 23322
Program: Simple, Smart Beekeeping
Speaker: Dr. Kirsten Traynor
April Monthly Meeting
Beekeepers Guild of Southeast Virginia April 2017
Volume 9, Issue 4
www.BeeKeepersGuild.org
Apiary Notes 2
Celebrate Agriculture Review
2
Officer Nominations 3
Beekeeper’s Garden 3
Gathering of the Guilds
4
Master Gardener Plant Sales
4
Swarm Boxes 5
National Colony Loss Survey
6
Queen Order 6
Hospitality Assistance 7
Dr. Kirsten Traynor 7
Dates to Remember 8
Swarm Bucket Workshop Review
8
Inside this issue:
President: Nick Delphia; Vice President: Rick Fisher; Treasurer: Cheryl Brown; Recording Secretary: Will Walker
Newsletter Editor and Webmaster: Pam Fisher | Deadline for the newsletter is the 20th of each month.
Nick Delphia, President
Beekeepers Guild of Southeast Virginia
Spring Queen
Order!
Limited number of
queen bees available
See page 6 of this
issue for more
information
Remove entrance reducers and mouse guards.
Feed any new splits, fresh caught swarms, and
light hives, especially if weather inhibits foraging.
Make sugar syrup in a 1:1 ratio (5 lbs. sugar to 10
cups water) at this time of year.
Replace 2 of 10 frames of old dark comb each year to
reduce disease and pesticide loads in the hive.
You should have your honey supers on already! A
queen excluder may be placed under the first honey
super of drawn comb.
Do NOT use medications in a colony with honey su-
pers for human consumption in place. The only ex-
ception is Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS) which con-
tain the organic compound, formic acid, a naturally
occurring component of honey
Keep new nucs well fed and monitor closely for
overcrowding until able to transfer to full size
hives.
If installing package bees, DO NOT open the
hive for at least five days. After one week, check
queen cage & release the queen if the bees have not
done so already. Disturb the hive as little as possible
during the first two weeks while they settle into their
new home with the queen.
Make splits when you see drones in the bee yard to
expand your operation or replace winter losses.
Queen cells can be used to make a split and delay
swarming.
Install a bait hive with one frame of drawn comb in a
nearby tree to catch swarms.
April Apiary Notes for Coastal Virginia
Page 2 The Bee L ine Apr i l 2017
Celebrate Agriculture Festival Review
Market, it was a fun event with something
for everyone, including a farm animals and
a bounce house for the kids. Thank you to
all who participated and special thanks to
Mark Pennecke for bringing the bees. Be
sure to put this fun event on your calendar
for next year!
On Saturday, March
25th, the Guild par-
ticipated in the Cele-
brate Agriculture
Festival and Craft
Show at the Virginia
Beach Farmers Mar-
ket. Guild members
Rick and Lou Anne
Franklin, Mark and
Sandy Pennecke,
Amy Bone, Brian
Krause, Eileen Zapatka, Jon Wynne and
Dawn James set up a display and edu-
cated the public about bees - not only
honey bees, but also carpenter bees
which were buzzing around looking for a
mate and a place to nest. The Guild table
was swarmed with visitors learning how
honey gets from the hive to the bottle and
how everything in the hive can be used
including wax cappings and propolis. At-
tendees jostled for a chance to taste sam-
ples of delicious local honey and catch a
glimpse of the bees in their observation
hive. Thanks to the staff of the Farmers
Guild Officer Elections
The Beekeeper’s Garden in April
It’s time to start thinking about Guild offi-
cers for the 2017-2018 year. Please con-
sider nominating someone or running for
an office yourself.
The criteria for potential candidates are
outlined in our guild’s bylaws: “To be con-
sidered for any office, any candidate must
have attended seventy-five (75) percent of
the Guild meetings and have participated
in a minimum of ten (10) hours of Guild-
sanctioned events within the prior year.
Additionally any candidate for the office of
President must have served at least one
year in a prior officer position.”
A nominating committee will present a
written slate of officers to Guild members
at the May meeting and accept nomina-
tions from the floor.
The slate will be published in the Guild’s
newsletter, The Bee Line, in June and vot-
ing will occur as the first order of business
at the June membership meeting prior to
any educational program.
Serving as a Guild officer is a wonderful
opportunity to help both our Guild and your
fellow beekeepers!
Current (Ribes sanguineum), Flowering
Quince (Chaenomeles speciosa), For-
sythia, Gallberry (Ilex glabra), Ground Ivy
(Glechoma), Japanese Aucuba, Japanese
Pieris, Lamium, Lenten Rose (Helleborus),
Pansy, Primrose (Primula vulgaris), Lung-
wort (Pulmonaria), Redbud (Cercis ca-
nadesis), Rosemary, Salvia, Scabiosa,
Scotch Broom (Cytisus), Snowflake
(Leucojum), Spring Flowering Bulbs, Star
Magnolia (Magnolia stellata), Verbena,
Viburnum, Washington Hawthorn
(Crataegus phaenopyrum), Witch Alder
(Fothergilla), Winter Daphne (Daphne
odora), Winterhazel (Corylopsis)
Virginia fields are often abloom in spring with the wonderfully fragrant white or lavender flow-ers of garden escapee, Dame’s Rocket (Hesperis matronalis). A relative of mustard, Dame’s Rocket is a prolific self-seeder that thrives in full sun to part shade. Plants require little care once estab-lished and are very at-tractive to pollinators.
Spring has finally arrived but the recent
cold weather took a toll on some early
bloomers. Look for the following spring
bloomers in Coastal Virginia: Azalea,
Baby Blue Eyes (Nemophila), Barrenwort
(Epimedium), Bachelor Buttons
(Centaurea cyanus), Bay Laurel (Laurus
nobilis), Bradford Pear, Breath of Spring
a/k/a Winter Honeysuckle (Lonicera fra-
grantissima), Brunnera, Bugleweed
(Ajuga), Blueberries, (Vaccinium), Camel-
lia japonicas, Camel-
lia oleifera, Carolina
Allspice
(Calycanthus flo-
ridus), Carolina Jas-
mine (Gelsemium),
Chickweed, Chinese
Wisteria, Corn
Poppy, (Papaver
rhoeas), Corydalis,
Crabapple, Creeping
Phlox, Dame’s
Rocket (Hesperis
matronalis), Dande-
lion (Taraxacum),
Edgeworthia, Fiv-
eleaf Akebia (Akebia
quinata), Flowering
Cherry, Flowering
Page 3 The Bee L ine Apr i l 2017
Akebia quinata, also known as Chocolate Vine gets its name from the fragrance of its spring flowers. Don’t let the delicate appearance of this invasive vine fool you; it quickly forms a dense mat capable of smothering native trees and shrubs.
Scotch Broom (Cytisus), a
native of northern Africa and
parts of Europe, was intro-
duced into Virginia in the
1800s to feed domestic
sheep. By 1860, it was clas-
sified as invasive. This hardy
perennial gets its name from
the common use of making
brooms from its thin, ever-
green branches. Leaves are
small and barely noticeable
but the yellow or pink pea-
like flowers transform the
shrub into an arching foun-
tain of blossoms that change
color as they age. Happy in
full sun and poor soil, Scotch
Broom blossoms for over a
month each spring.
"Leadership is not
a position or a
title, it is action
and example.”
- Cory Booker.
mational booth at the Chesapeake Mas-
ter Gardener Plant Sale. Please sign up
in the members section of our website if
you can assist. The shifts are short and
we always have plenty of time to do a
little shopping!
Although we will not have a booth at the
Virginia Beach Master Gardeners plant
sale, their sale is not to be missed.
They will hold their sale at the Virginia
Beach Farmers Market, 3640 Dam Neck
Road, on Saturday, May 6th from 9 AM
to 3 PM and Sunday May 7th from 10
AM to 2 PM.
The Portsmouth Master Gardeners will
hold their spring plant sale in conjunc-
tion with their Open House on Saturday,
May 6th from 9 AM to 2 PM at their of-
fice located at 105 Utah Street, Ports-
mouth, VA 23701. Tour their display
gardens between educational demon-
strations.
Master Gardener Plant Sales
Is there anything that goes together as
well as gardening and beekeeping? The
two are so interrelated that most bee-
keepers become experts at plant identifi-
cation without ever realizing it. And
many gardeners take up beekeeping
just to improve their garden. So what
gladdens the heart of a beekeeper al-
most as much as a swarm call? A plant
sale! And especially a Master Gardener
Plant Sale where locally adapted plants
are offered at very reasonable prices.
The Chesapeake Master Gardener Plant
Sale will be Friday, April 29th from 8
AM to 6 PM and Saturday, April 30th
from 9 AM to Noon in front of the Great
Bridge Community Center at 212 Holt
Dr., Chesapeake
The sale will feature locally grown per-
ennials, annuals, trees, shrubs, herbs
and more. Expert advice is also avail-
able at the sale.
Our Beekeepers Guild will host an infor-
Page 4 The Bee L ine Apr i l 2017
Gathering of the Guilds By Brian Krause
Tidewater Knitting Guild of Virginia
Tidewater Turners
Tidewater Friends of Acoustic Music
Seaside Smockers
Tidewater Quilters Guild of Virginia
There really is something for everyone in
the family as the Red River Smokehouse
Food Truck will be serving up fine eats
and there will an Easter Egg hunt for the
kids. A special appearance by the Easter
Bunny is expected!
Admission to this event is free and in-
cludes a brief tour of the Francis Land
House. The Francis Land House is located
at 3131 Virginia Beach Boulevard, Virginia
Beach.
April is upon us and that means it is time
for “The Gathering of the Guilds.” The
Beekeepers Guild will once again partici-
pate in this event by sharing best bee-
keeping practices, educating the public
and selling honey products. The 26th an-
nual Gathering of the Guilds will take place
at the Francis Land House on Saturday,
April 8 from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Visitors
will learn about traditional skills as guild
members from numerous groups demon-
strate their specialties to the public.
Additional participating guilds include:
Virginia Native Plant Society
Butterfly Society of Virginia
Back Bay Wildfowl Guild
Tidewater Basketry Guild
Swarm Boxes By Bettina Strobach
As we are getting
ready for swarm
season, I want to
share my experi-
ence. For the
past three years,
every spring I
load up my little
car with a swarm
bucket, a long pole, my suit, veil and
various other paraphernalia and wish
for that magical ball of bees clinging
to a branch, fence, picnic table, etc. I
keep my phone glued to my side in
hopes that I will receive that call. I will
go to almost any sighting in anticipa-
tion that the treasure lies there. This
has led me to cutouts that produced
nothing or dead bees, a call where all
I collected were the bees the previous
beekeeper left behind. Never did I
give up hope or get discouraged; my
freebees were out there and patience
would lead me to them.
Finally, last spring my brother kindly
passed a swarm call on to me. This
was the real deal! A branch I
should've been able to reach easily, a
fantastic homeowner that even helped
me cut the branch, and a swarm that
would fill two mediums! I had a few
things not in my favor: it was an un-
usually cool spring morning, I only
had 30 minutes to collect the bees
prior to going to work, and it was rain-
ing. Upon collecting the bees, my pole
snapped and the bees ended up in
the neighbor’s driveway. I will never
forget the look of horror in this won-
derful homeowner’s face. He called
me to save the bees, not to flatten
them. It had a happy ending though,
the rain kept them put but they were
extremely upset with me and I en-
dured 18 stings. I didn't care; there
was a beautiful mated queen among
them. They filled two buckets and I
drove them to my apiary where they
thrived and did extremely well.
Page 5 The Bee L ine Apr i l 2017
So as I am honing my swarm catching
skills and learning from my trials and
errors, I started wondering if there
was an easier way to catch these glo-
rious little creatures. In my research,
the topic of swarm boxes repeatedly
popped up. So I started to investigate.
How wonderful I thought, hanging a
box in a tree and letting the bees
come to me! The only fear I would
need to overcome was climbing up a
ladder to retrieve them. But hopefully
the ridiculous calamity of errors would
be behind me and I could still get
what I so wanted… more bees!
As in all things beekeeping, there are
200 different ways to create a swarm
box. You can take two nuc boxes,
clamp them together and provide a
roof and floor, you can take a regular
super and do the same, you can pur-
chase a swarm catching box from
many beekeeping companies or you
can get creative and just make some-
thing of your own. But where to start
with the dimensions? I stumbled upon
a wonderful article from the Cornell
University Apiary Studies program,
Bait Hives for Honey Bees by Thomas
D. Seeley, Roger A Morse, and Rich-
ard Nowogrodzki. Their dimensions
were odd, nothing that would hold a
frame, but supposedly they had re-
searched it and found it was a space
and cavity to which a swarm gravi-
tated.
So off I go. I find scrap pieces of
wood that happened to be the dimen-
sions to create this box. I wanted to
test different theories, so I also took
two of my more beat up supers and
also turned them into a swarm box.
After carefully assembling them, mak-
ing sure no light could go through,
and baiting them with either lemon-
grass oil or Swarm Commander, I
started searching for trees in which to
hang my glorious boxes, the
"preferred" hanging height being 15
feet up. I scattered them around town
and left a few on the property. I even
took one to a homeowner who had
bees trying to get in behind his chim-
ney in hopes that the lure would be
more tempting than his chimney.
To my utter amazement, out of the
five boxes I hung, I collected three
swarms!!! Which boxes worked you
ask - the ones I built using Cornell's
measurements. The swarms were
dramatically different in size, but I
didn't care, they came to me!
As we are preparing for swarm sea-
son, my boxes are hung and baited.
Now don't get me wrong, my swarm
bucket will make it back into my car,
my phone will remain by my side, and
I will still be driving with one eye star-
ing up into every tree. I wanted to
share my swarm box experience with
other beekeepers who would love to
get in on the action. Life is busy
enough, and if the bees will come to
you, hey I'm all for that!
Page 6 The Bee L ine Apr i l 2017
National Colony Loss/Management Survey
beekeepers see what actionable practices
are correlated with improving survivorship!
Some beekeepers may be contacted inde-
pendently by the National Agricultural Sta-
tistics Service (NASS) of the USDA to par-
ticipate in their first quarterly colony loss
survey. All beekeepers contacted by
NASS are encouraged to answer BOTH
BIP and NASS surveys.
If you have any questions or comments,
please contact us at
Beekeepers needed! Please participate
in the National Colony Loss Management
Survey organized by the Bee Informed
Partnership and sponsored by the National
Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).
Please go to the online survey
at https://beeinformed.org/participate/ and
complete the survey there. It will be live
from April 1st to April 30th. Please do not
complete the survey more than once.
The Colony Loss Survey has evolved from
the winter loss survey conducted 11 years
ago. Now summer losses are monitored
as well. The National Management Survey
is conducted annually in conjunction with
the Colony Loss Survey. The two surveys
are aimed at looking for relationships be-
tween colony losses and colony manage-
ment (including disease treatment strate-
gies, supplemental feeding, etc.) and/or
other factors that may influence colony
health (such as colony location, honey
production, and forage type).
Also available is the dynamic state map
located at
https://bip2.beeinformed.org/geo where
one can view state losses from all years of
the survey including annual, winter and
summer losses as well as the number of
participants and colony numbers for each
state. Dynamic management reports that
have resulted from previous years’ sur-
veys can now be found at
https://bip2.beeinformed.org/survey. This
exciting data management explorer lets
Guild Queen Order
The guild is participating in a group queen
bee order from Strachan Apiaries, produc-
ers of New World Carniolan (NWC)
queens. NWCs are renowned for their
gentleness, honey production and disease
resistance.
Marked queens are $28.50 each and will
arrive on four dates, April 16th, May 30th,
June 13 and June 27. If you would like to
order more than two or three queens,
please split your order among delivery
dates to allow others to participate. The
signup for queens is available in the mem-
ber’s section of the Guild’s web site.
“Now that we have
several years of
data, we are
beginning to look for
patterns across the
best performing
beekeepers in each
region to start to
understand what
combinations of
management
practices work best
at keeping colonies
alive.”
--Bee Informed
Partnership
Refreshment Assistance
Dr. Kirsten Traynor
Refreshment Request
We all enjoy the snacks at monthly meet-
ings and the fellowship they foster but
they don’t just happen. Gracious guild
members kindly take their time to make or
purchase refreshments to share with oth-
ers. Often it’s the same people month
after month supplying us all with tasty
treats.
If each member brought snacks just
once a year, we could all enjoy refresh-
ments at every meeting with very little
effort.
If you can help by bringing snacks or bev-
erages to share, we are most grateful. A
sign-up is located in the members section
of our web site. Homemade or store-
bought, we appreciate it all!
Refreshment Coordinator
The Guild is looking for assistance coordi-
nating the snacks for breaks at monthly
meetings. This could be one person or a
team of volunteers willing to take on the
role of organizing refreshments for our
group.
We are looking for somebody to bring the
paper products and water to each guild
monthly meeting and arrange the refresh-
ments brought by guild members prior to
the refreshment break.
If your special talents are organizational
and you find coordinating refreshments
for social events rewarding, please con-
sider volunteering by contacting guild
president, Nick Delphia at 757-536-1354
the Medicinal Benefits of Honey and co-wrote the book Simple, Smart Beekeeping. She also manages a boutique organic api-ary producing top quality nucs and Mary-land-reared queens. Using the biology of the bee against the biology of the varroa mite, she keeps her colonies healthy with-out synthetic chemicals.
Dr. Traynor’s presentation will be Simple,
Smart Beekeeping, also the title of her
book. In German, there is a popular say-
ing “Wieso einfach, wenn auch um-
standig”, which means why take the sim-
ple route, when there is a complicated
one. As humans, we gravitate toward com-
plicated answers. Maybe we’re drawn to
complex solutions, because if it’s difficult
and we fail, it’s understandable and we
don’t feel bad. But beekeeping need not
be complicated, difficult or complex. Learn
to keep healthy hives in an easy, carefree
way so you enjoy your hives and feel con-
fident working your bees.
Join the Guild in welcoming Dr. Kirsten Traynor of Flickerwood Apiary as our guest speaker this month. In 2006-2007, Kirsten received a German Chancellor Fellowship and drove over 50,000 miles throughout Western Europe to study the differences between European and Ameri-can beekeeping. She reported her findings through 50+ published articles in American Bee Journal and other bee publications around the world.
Fascinated with the social complexity of a honey bee hive, she earned her PhD in biology from Arizona State University with Dr. Robert Page. While a grad student, she spent almost a year in Avignon, France in the lab of Dr. Yves Le Conte as a Fulbright Fellow. Dr. Traynor currently investigates how pesticides impact honey bee health in the lab of Dr. Dennis vanEngelsdorp and was just appointed editor of Bee World, the beekeeping magazine published by the International Bee Research Association. She is the au-thor of Two Million Blossoms: Discovering
Page 7 The Bee L ine Apr i l 2017
“Hearing her talk is
eye-opening.
I learned so much
and can’t wait to
apply it to my
hives.”
Swarm Bucket Workshop By Buddy Hoggard
Page 8 The Bee L ine Apr i l 2017
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April 2016
On March 11, 2017, at the
Chesapeake Agriculture
Trailer, Dennis Heidenthal
and Buddy Hoggard
teamed up to teach a
Swarm Bucket and Bee
Vac Workshop. 15 Guild
members built their own
swarm buckets and
learned how to use them.
Dennis and Buddy first
demonstrated building a
swarm bucket for the class
and then everyone built
their own with some assis-
tance from the class lead-
ers. Dennis and Buddy
explained different ways to
use the swarm buckets and
also demonstrated four
styles of bee vacuums for
class participants to exam-
ine and build for them-
selves.
Many great questions
came up and the class was
able to see the importance
of mentor relationships as
Dennis and Buddy continu-
ally referred to what their
mentors had taught
them. Dennis’ mentor is
Dave Kvello, who taught
the previous Swarm Bucket
Workshop. Buddy’s men-
tor is Bill Gregory, who has
been a continual source of
information to Buddy and
his wife, Geri, since 2014.
Hopefully those in atten-
dance will be able to res-
cue many swarms through
the coming years thanks to
the workshop. And thank
you to the mentors who
took the time to guide nov-
ices to the point that they
could teach the workshop!
Dates to Remember
April 3 - Chesapeake 4-H Bee-
keeping Club Meeting
April 6- Board Meeting - Members
welcome!
April 8 - Gathering of the Guilds
April 10 - Guild Meeting
April 19- Virginia Beach 4-H
Beekeeping Club Meeting
April 28 & 29- Chesapeake
Master Gardener Plant Sale
May 4- Board Meeting - Members
welcome!