Beekeeping News
MID-ATLANTIC ORGANIC HONEY BEE CONVENTION
MID-ATLANTIC ORGANIC HONEY BEE CONVENTION
4500 Kensington Ave., Richmond, Virginia
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Register at our website www.beebustersinc.com or contact John Adams, 804 285-BEES, or email martha.brooks27@gmail.com
Mid-Atlantic Organic Honey Bee Convention
Saturday, March 17, 2012
COST – $30 per person pre-register $35 at door $50 per household
Dealers welcome / free space
SPEAKERS & TOPICS
SCHEDULE:
8 – 8:30 am Registration/Snacks & Coffee
8:30 – 9:30 am John Adams Organic methods for Langstroth, top bar and alternative hives/Organic treatments of diseases/How to keep bees and almost NOT spend money/58 different types of bee hives/Honey, wax, and propolis extraction at a price anybody can afford.
9:30 – 10:30 am Sam Comfort Alternative hives. Exploring a different route, his Anarchy Apiaries now provides surplus bees, queens, and honey from about 400 rustic, treatment-free hives: Kenyan top bar, Warre’, and Langstroth from New York to Florida.
Sam freely shares a lot of tips, songs, why’s, how’s, and plenty of opinions for and against whatever, the state of the bee industry.
Break
10:45 am – 12 noon Wyatt Mangum is an icon in the world of beekeeping. Today he speaks on “Top Bar Hive Management” – Top bar hive management practices and how to hive package bees/Feeding the new adventure in a top bar hive, including feeding and establishing the new colony.
Lunch 12:00 – 1pm Pot Luck (or down the road)
1pm – 2 pm Sam Comfort Continuing the morning talk
Short Break
2 – 3 pm Wyatt Mangum “Hiving a Package in a Top Bar Hive” and “Summary of TBH Hive Products & Services,” including liquid honey, cut comb honey, queen and package bee production, pollen trapping and crop pollination
3 – 4 pm Keith Tignor is the State Apiarist for Virginia and whose love of honey bees is evident to anyone who knows him. His talk today is on “Overlooked facts that beekeepers sometimes forget.”
BIOS:
John Adams has been beekeeping since 1974 and has been an advocate of alternative hives since the 1980’s. His book was published last year which examines the many systems of keeping honey bees throughout the centuries. There is emphasis on O. O. Poppleton’s long box hive. This historic hive of Poppleton was very much tested and proven to have obvious advantages because of its simplicity to make and operate, particularly if you are not into lifting heavy objects. (The Langstroth hive requires hydraulics if you are a commercial beekeeper. Langstroth equipment converts well to a long box with a few modifications and very little loss of old equipment and can operate with many different types of topbars.)
Sam Comfort is a brilliant creative beekeeper with a long record of commercial beekeeping. Sam Comfort explains that he won six beehives in a poker game in 2002, then spent several years working in large-scale migratory pollination, honey production, and queen rearing. Exploring a different route, his Anarchy Apiaries now provides surplus bees, queens, and honey from about 400 rustic, treatment-free hives: Kenyan top bar, Warre, and Langstroth from New York to Florida. Sam freely shares a lot of tips, songs, why’s, how’s, and plenty of opinions for and against this approach, the state of the bee industry, and how communities can work together towards self-sufficiency in beekeeping. The mission of Anarchy Apiaries is to bring the means of production back to the beekeeper, to make beekeeping feasible, simple, and affordable for all, and to facilitate the beekeeping network with more hives than televisions.
Wyatt Mangum is a life-long beekeeper, a columnist for the American Bee Journal, a world traveler among different beekeeping systems (in Asia, South America and Africa), and an apicultural historian studying old beekeeping techniques. He has managed 200 top-bar hives for commercial pollination, queen rearing, package bee production, honey, wax, and pollen collection. Wyatt has finished a 12-chapter book on top-bar hives with over 300 photographs comprising over 25 years experience with these hives; the book will be available soon. (In high school Wyatt built up a 125 frame-hive operation and made honey by the ton.)
Keith Tignor is the State Apiarist for Virginia and whose love of honey bees is evident to anyone who knows him. Through his association with Virginia Tech and Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services over the past 25 years, Mr. Tignor has worked closely with the agriculture community to promote beekeeping and the health of honey bees. His VDACS responsibilities include supervision of apiculture initiatives to promote the science of beekeeping, prevent the spread of diseases, and encourage the pollination of crops. Mr. Tignor regularly speaks to local, state, and national organizations and groups. He is also active in several apiculture organizations such as the Apiary Inspectors of America, Virginia State Beekeepers’ Association and beekeeping groups in the central Virginia region.
March 17th is St. Patrick’s Day, I wonder if they will have any green honey for sale.
Thanks to Karla Eisen for this info.
Posted in 
Beehive Tax Credit being considered in Virginia
Special thanks to Keith Provost for passing this important information along-
12100941D
1. That the Code of Virginia is amended by adding in Article 3 of Chapter 3 of Title 58.1 a section numbered 58.1-339.13 as follows:
§ 58.1-339.13. Beehive tax credit.
A. For taxable years beginning on and after January 1, 2012, but before January 1, 2015, any taxpayer who purchases equipment to start a new beehive shall be entitled to a credit against the tax levied pursuant to § 58.1-320 of an amount equal to $200 per new hive, not to exceed $2,400 per year. In order to be eligible, the taxpayer shall register as a beekeeper with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and request and receive an inspection of his new hives from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
B. The total amount of tax credits under this section for a calendar year shall not exceed $500,000. In the event that applications for such credits exceed $500,000 for any calendar year, the Department of Taxation shall allocate the credits on a pro rata basis.
C. If the amount of the credit exceeds the taxpayer’s liability for the taxable year, the excess may be carried over for credit against the income taxes of the taxpayer in the next five taxable years or until the total credit amount has been taken, whichever occurs first.
2. That the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services shall compile, maintain, and distribute a Virginia Beekeeping Guide to provide information to beekeepers on beekeeping.
Here is the full link:
Local production of nucs and queens
The Prince William Regional Beekeepers Association developed a report on their research into the comparison of the survivability of colonies sourced from packages and from nucs. In addition, they examined the advantages of winterized queens, see below for a summary and links. A long but easy read (20 pages) and worth your time, IMO. An interesting outcome of the work done by the group of club members involved is that several had never made a nuc before and even more had not reared queens. BONS could do this too if we had the interest. We have current members that do all that and more, some with only a few years of beekeeping experience, and they could provide the core guidance. So what do you think? Huh?
Thanks to Karla Eisen for bring this information to my attention. She is also a new (2011-2012) BONS member. Karla was a principle member of the group that received the funding.
Promoting Sustainable Beekeeping Practices through local production of nucs (nucleus colonies) and local queen honeybees. Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) 2011 Final Report
Summary
The Prince William Regional Beekeepers Association (PWRBA) producer SARE project compared hives started from packaged bees to hives started from nucleus colonies (nucs) positively demonstrating higher survival for nuc started hives than package started hives, with survival differences more pronounced in the second year. Education and training resulted in adopting more sustainable beekeeping practices. These centered on utilizing existing colonies to produce sufficient nucs to (1) replace dead hives, (2) increase apiaries, and (3) provide starter hives for new beekeepers and association members instead of relying on commercially produced packaged bees from outside the region. The number of nucs made available to association members in lieu of packaged bees increased dramatically over the course of the project. Queen rearing was successfully initiated.
The results of the SARE funded research can be found at: http://mysare.sare.org/mySARE/ProjectReport.aspx?do=viewRept&pn=FS08-223&y=2011&t=1
In search of a better bee
NAPPC International Conference, October 25-27, 2011
11th ANNUAL NAPPC INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, 1000 Constitution Ave NW Washington, D.C. 20560
MONDAY, OCTOBER 25th
The Strange Disappearance of the Bees screening followed by Q&A with film director, Mark Daniels
Free Screening – direct
from Europe. The first U.S. showing!
3:30 PM EST
Baird Auditorium, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, 1000 Constitution NW, Washington D.C.
Free with RSVP
The Strange Disappearance of the
Bees is a documentary about how mass deaths of bees have recently swept all
over the world. Increasingly each spring, beekeepers open their hives to find
entire colonies wiped out. And beekeepers aren’t the only ones who are worried.
Bees pollinate at least a third of the world’s crops. If the dramatic decline
in worldwide bee populations continues, essential food crops could disappear,
along with entire ecosystems.
Featuring
stunning photography, this film takes us right into beehives and onto plants
along with the pollinators. It also surveys the science through conversations
with top researchers such as entomologist May Berenbaum of the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and biologist Paul Ehrlich of Stanford’s Center
for Conservation Biology.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25th
VIP Cocktail Evening Reception
6-8 PM EST
Rotunda, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, 1000 Constitution NW, Washington D.C.
Free with RSVP
to NAPPC partners, stakeholders, and Members of Congress and staff
Presenting the
NAPPC-NACD Farmer-Rancher and the Pollinator Advocate Awards. Spring 44 Honey
Vodka will be served along with light pollinator-friendly hours d’oeuvres.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26th
Open to the Public NAPPC Session: “Our Future Flies on the Wings of Pollinators”
9 – 11 AM EST – Baird Auditorium, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, 1000 Constitution NW, Washington D.C.
Please enter the Smithsonian on the Constitution Ave side. Free with RSVP
Keynote Speakers Include:
- Cristián Samper, Ph.D., Director, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
- Bryan Arroyo, Asst. Director, Fisheries and Habitat Conservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
- Ed Flanagan, President and CEO, Jasper Wyman & Son, No Bees, No Blueberries, No Wyman’s
- Rev. Richard Cizak, President, The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, Bridging Outward: Collaborators for the Planet
Tags:
Is the Honey In Your Cupboard Tainted?
Doug Koch sent the link to this article which describes a serious problem. Even if you don’t buy “foreign” honey yourself honey of unknown origin is commonly used in cereal and other baked goods. The American Bee Journal has also addressed this concern in several of its issues this year.
Doug Morris
A recent Food Safety investigative report indicating that the U.S. honey supply may have harmful and illegal substances is cause for alarm for American consumers. This tainted honey, imported from Asian nations, including China, India, and Vietnam, is being rejected all over Europe and yet it’s being smuggled into the U.S. and landing on our supermarket shelves.
In June 2010, the European countries began banning the harmful sweetener containing lead and illegal antibiotics used in animals. The U.S., however, did not ban the importation nor did they beef up screening measures. According to the article, “During [January to June] the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that almost 43 million pounds of honey entered the U.S. Of that, the Department of Commerce said 37.7 million pounds came from India, the same honey that is banned in the EU because it contained animal medicine and lead and lacked the proper paperwork to prove it didn’t come from China.”
But exactly how much honey are we importing from Asia? Food Safety got the stats from Import Genius, a private shipping intelligence service. According to their database, “The U.S. imported 208 million pounds of honey over the past 18 months. Almost 60 percent of what was imported — 123 million pounds — came from Asian countries — traditional laundering points for Chinese honey. This included 45 million pounds from India alone.”
More From Delish: 13 Nutrition and Food Myths Busted
This makes Richard Adee, the Washington Legislative Chairman of the American Honey Producers Association, extremely concerned. “We’re supposed to have the world’s safest food supply but we’re letting in boatloads of this adulterated honey that all these other countries know is contaminated and FDA does nothing,” he told Food Safety News.
What’s even scarier? In 2001, an epidemic killed tens of millions of Chinese bee-keepers’ colonies. “They fought the disease with several Indian-made animal antibiotics, including chloramphenicol. Medical researchers found that children given chloramphenicol as an antibiotic are susceptible to DNA damage and carcinogenicity. Soon after, the FDA banned its presence in food.”
Honey, by the way, isn’t just in those cute little squeezeable bears. It’s used in many processed foods that you may have in your pantry, including cereals, baked goods, sauces, and even beverages. It’s believed that millions of pounds of honey are imported and then distributed to larger food suppliers and American packaged goods companies.
More From Delish: Food Safety Quiz
China is no stranger to tainted foods. In 2008, more than 300,000 children were sickened by milk powder laced with the deadly substance melamine, which was added by unscrupulous producers who claimed they were increasing the protein content. Quality control in China is a challenging problem for the U.S. government given their regulation issues.
Moral of the story: try to get your honey from your local farmers’ market when possible. And while we don’t want to stir up any pandemonium, you may want to see if your honey jar has note about its origin. If it’s India or China, you may just want to toss it.
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