Bee School is coming back. Click here to sign up today!

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RIBA is proud to welcome back Dan Conlon as the featured speaker for our January general membership meeting. Dan is a full-time beekeeper and co-owner of Warm Colors Apiary in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. Along with Bonita Conlon, they produce varieties of local and regional honeys, beeswax products, and provide pollination to Pioneer Valley farms and orchards. Dan’s beekeeping experience includes forty-five years of apiary management, honey production and crop pollination. 

Dan is the president of the Russian Honey Bee Breeders Association and has served as President of the Massachusetts Beekeepers Association, Franklin County Beekeepers Association, and as the Massachusetts representative to the Eastern Apicultural Society’s Board of Directors. Dan was recognized as 2004 Beekeeper of the Year by the Eastern Apicultural Society and awarded the Divelbiss Award for beekeeping education and public outreach. Dan was voted Massachusetts Beekeeper of the Year in 2005. These are just a few of the many accolades earned by Dan and Warm Colors Apiary over the years.

https://www.warmcolorsapiary.com

November 8, 2pm: Dr Howard Ginsberg, URI

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Please take 5 minutes to fill out our first ever honey pricing survey. This is 15 questions about how much (if any) honey you extracted this year, how you price your honey, and where you sell it. It is anonymous and you don’t need to be a RIBA member to participate, but this is intended for Rhode Island beekeepers only, please. Please click the link to take the survey after you’re done with your fall honey extractions:

https://forms.gle/YWSTNK8HXRq99zwz6

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July/August Tasks for RI Beekeepers

I generally plan on extracting honey around the 4th of July. That’s not set in stone, but it’s easy for me to remember. Frames that are 80-100% capped can be assumed to be ready to extract. Uncapped frames MAY also be ready to extract, but without a refractometer to test, there’s no good way to be certain. 18.6% moisture or below is what you are aiming for.

Wet supers can be placed back on the hives to refill or clean, depending on flow/dearth conditions in your area. Wet supers should not be left out in your yard or a field for bees to rob out. This is essentially open feeding and can attract pests, cause fighting between bees at the food source, lead to robbing of hives, and contribute to the spread of disease/viruses/mites. Open feeding should never be used by backyard/small scale beekeepers, it’s completely unnecessary. Even for commercial beekeepers with 1000s of hives to deal with, open feeding was cited as one of the top 5 WORST management practices in a recent BIP study:
https://anchor.fm/ufhbrel/episodes/Best-Management-Practices-and-Factors-That-Determine-a-Worker-vs-a-Queen-eg7g91

 

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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 7pm Live Via Zoom

 

Beekeeping is an ancient occupation, but the successful beekeeper in 2020 is one who has learned to adapt to changing times. We can no longer just stick hives in a field, ignore them, and expect to have healthy colonies (or honey crops) at the end of the year. Mite treatment guidelines are continually being refined, antibiotics now require a Veterinary Feed Directive to purchase, and a new collection of gadgets and fad hive designs is available every year.  RIBA has always honored the wisdom and traditions of the past while simultaneously looking towards the future. We don’t want to cling to lore and anecdote, or ignore potentially important innovations. This spring is certainly putting that philosophy to the test. I had anticipated challenges when I was elected, but obviously nothing like the situation we’re dealing with now. Rest assured, RIBA is committed to fulfilling our core goals as laid out by our bylaws: education, best practices, cooperation, support, and networking. How we will accomplish these goals will look different this summer than it has in the past, but we’re beekeepers; by nature we are resilient, stubborn, and iconoclastic. I think we can also add optimistic to that list; beekeeping is more challenging than ever, and the potential rewards come months, or years, in the future, yet here we are.

 

If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions about how we can better serve RI’s bees and beekeepers during this period, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally.

 

 

 

I hope you’re all staying safe and sane. Here’s to another exciting season!