Orange County Beekeepers Association

We’ve had another great turnout this year for the Orange County Beekeepers Association Bee School. The 10 week course covers everything from honeybee biology and their social activity within the hive to diseases and pest management. At the end of the course, students will be armed with the information they need to begin their first season as beekeepers. The course also includes a couple of field days where students will have the opportunity to build hive boxes and frames as well as get some hands on experience inspecting a hive of bees.

Here are some photos from the first few weeks of class.

It's Bee School time again

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2012 was a great year for OCBA and we hope to have another good one. We have many familiar faces in our leadership this year and some new faces. Dick Merritt and ‘Lizbeth Collins will continue on in their present roles. Our outgoing director,Watty Bowes, will continue in his role of coordinating outreach and assist Rex Williams, our incoming director, in all of outreach work. Charles Fleckenstein, and Chris Richmond, continue on as directors. Todd Walker finishes up as president but will continue to help us by coordinating the 2013 Bee School with Dick as our registrar. David Bailey who this year is starting his own local bee supply company will be working with Todd on our 4-H program. Inge Kautzmann will serve to get the word out as our Announcement and Web Site Coordinator. Lucy will continue as our pollinator garden coordinator and is looking for volunteers to help keep up the garden.

Our other big change is our change in venue.  Starting in January 2013, we will be meeting  at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Hillsborough, 1710 Old NC 10, Hillsborough, NC. As in the past we will meet the second Thursday of the month at 7pm. Our first meeting will be January 10th: Randall Austin Your Bees Stink, Pheromones in the Hive.

Bee School will meet from 7pm to 9pm each Tuesday evening for 10 weeks. The first class will be held on January 8th and will begin at 7:00 pm. Sign-in and registration will begin at 6:30 pm. Preregistration for bee School is almost full so don’t wait to sign up.

First, Second and Third. John Harrell, Lewis Cauble and Todd Walker all brought home ribbons from the NCSBA Summer Meeting held in Lumberton NC. As you can tell, Lewis is tickled pink with his second place ribbon in the cooking with honey category for his honey cinnamon rolls. John took first place for his chunk honey and Todd came in third place for his amber extracted honey.

OCBA has had a great year so far.  We sponsored and organized a 10-week bee school attended by 75 new beekeepers, including two 4-H students that the club is sponsoring and mentoring.  As part of the school we held two workshops: one on equipment and one on hive inspections that included locating queens, eggs and larvae, and sugar shake testing for determining varroa mite loads.  One of our 4-H students held a hiving packages workshop at his home.

The club sponsored two 4-H students.  We provided them each with 2 hives, bees, veils, smoker and hive tools. They worked with 4-H to study and write about bees and will be doing presentations through 4-H to the larger community. Our president, Todd Walker, coordinated this effort.

Our membership has increased to 180 and we are seeing lots of new faces at our spring meetings.  Dick Merritt has been keeping up with our membership and our treasury.  We have had a range of speakers from research on bees with Julianna Rangel to information on hive management from our inspectors as with Adolphus Leonard. Chris Richmond has been helping to coordinate snacks so they are better than ever. Our meetings have been filled with lots of news, friendships formed and beekeeping shared.  ‘Lizbeth Collins continues in her untiring work keeping up with our minutes and keeping us all on track.

Watty Bowes has led our efforts in outreach and we have had numerous members give presentations for schools and clubs.  We have also gotten the word out about honey bees through many fairs and festivals including the Chapel Hill Garden Tour, the Orange County Earth Day, Magic Wings and the Piedmont Festival for Wildlife.  We are looking forward to presenting a strong presence at the Eno River Festival [see calendar for details].

Alongside our monthly meetings we have just had a joint field day with Alamance County with over 30 people in attendance.  The field day included hive inspections in the morning and honey extraction in the afternoon.  We have at least two more field days coming up, so keep an eye on the calendar for future dates.

While outreach and meetings are important, beekeeping is really what we are all about.  We had a very mild winter with little to no break in brood.  Many people reported heavier than usual mite loads.  Along with mild weather, we saw bloom times sped up with some blooms coming between 2 to 4 weeks early.  While good regular rains provided us with strong nectar flows, the blooms times were very compressed with many honey plants blooming simultaneously.  We also saw more than usual swarms which while potentially increasing our hives, can reduce honey crops.

Our pollinator garden is looking beautiful and is full of honey bees.  Lucy Wilson has taken over coordinating care of the garden and it is looking better than ever.

Many beekeepers are excited about pulling honey and we hope to see a good harvest this year. Thanks to everyone who has helped and participated in the club this year.