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BEEKEEPERS ASSOCIATIONOF

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

President Denise Taylor

1st Vice President Tom Greiner2nd Vice President David Taylor

Secretary Christopher ReedTreasurer Bennie LilesNew sletter editor Alan Fiala

Website http:/ / ww w.beekeepersnova.org

April - May 2008

Next Membership Meeting isTuesday, May 27, 2008

7:30 p.m.

County Fair Meeting 6:45 p.m.

Cafeteria, Falls Church High School

7521 Jaguar TrailFalls Church, VA 22042

In This Issue

Next Meeting program BANV 1

Presidents Corner 1

4-H Report 2

Minutes of the Jan. 2008 meeting 2Short News Notes 2

Research Opportunity 3

Future meetings of BANV

The meeting room is frequentlychanged without notice please check

at the door for announcements.

July 19, 2008 (tentative) TBAAnnual Picnic

Sept. 23, 2008 Falls Church HSJeff Pettis, Beltsville Bee Lab

Nov. 1, 2008 Blue Ridge CCVSBA Winter Meeting

Nov. 25, 2008 Falls Church HSBob Wellemeyer, Apiary Inspector

Other Meetings of Interest

Advanced classes see the club web site(URL above).

Listgroup for BANVTo subscribe, just send a message to

[email protected] and say thatyou are a member of BANV.

Keith Tignor Our man inRichmond

The next membership meeting is Tuesday,May 27, in the cafeteria at Falls Church HighSchool at 7:30.

Are you a sustainable beekeeper? Maybeyou are wondering: what is sustainablebeekeeping? In the most basic sense, sus-tainable is defined as supplying necessitiesand nourishment. As beekeepers we all dothat. But what else can we do? Well, ourState Apiarist, Keith Tignor will be sheddingsome light on this subject. Hes very enter-taining and informative; attendance is wellworth your effort.

Those who plan to sell at the ArlingtonCounty Fair in August will meet at 6:45,before the main meeting, to set prices and

discuss any other relevant matters.

The Presidents Corner

There have been a few reports of overly ag-gressive bees in Northern Virginia. Hopefullyno one in BANV has ordered packages fromTexas, Florida, Arizona, Southern Californiaor any other place the Africanized honeybeehas taken up residence. If you have, you arenot only affecting the temperament of yourbeeyard, but also other local beeyards withthe Africanized drones hanging around. It

would only take a couple of serious stingingincidentsand suburban beekeeping would bea thing of the past. We really want to keep gen-tle bees in our backyards. Please keep an eye onyour hives temperament. If there are any ques-tions, have another BANV member come andjudge with you.

I hope you got a wonderful crop from the blacklocust before the flow was washed out.

BANV Newsletter, May 2008 1
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2 B A Bee 4-H Club Report

Brenda Kiessling, Leader

We continue to find new members, one ortwo at a time. If you know any youngsters,ages 9-19, who might be interested, givethem(and their parents) my email ([email protected]) or my home phone

number (703-938-9389---Lv. message).Efforts to start other 4-H Beekeeping clubsin the state are looking more hopeful:Culpeper and Rappahanock County haveextension agents who are interested and atleast one adult leader who is interested.Keith Tignor, in his travels to all the exten-sion services, will mention the 2 B A BEEclub (personal communication with Keith atVSBA meeting).

Back at home: The pollination garden atHidden Pond Nature Center (off Old Keene

Mill Rd) plans are proceeding. At the re-quest of the Center, 2 B A BEE 4-H club willcreate a pollination garden. May is plantingmonth. Work crews and schedule will be de-cided on May 3 at the 2 B A BEE meeting.

At the April club meeting, President EnyaKent (with gavel which she used effectively)ran a tightly organized discussion concern-ing the ways that the club would want touse the money in their treasury. #1 on theirlist was to buy enough bee gloves so therewould be sufficient supply.

The club plans to attend the June 27 Belts-ville Bee Lab Open House. Bart Smith saidthat they have no idea how many to expectso he suggested that our whole club can go--he thinks there will be room for all.

Minutes of the March 25, 2008

Meeting of BANV

First Vice President Tom Greiner began themeeting in the Falls Church High Schoolcafeteria at 7:40 p.m. by asking for motionsto approve the minutes to the previous

meeting and to approve the proposedbudget for fiscal year 2008 as published inthe March newsletter. Kathy Heslep askedif the budget includes money for the pur-chaseof a microscope. Mr. Greiner repliedthat it does not because BANV has notvoted to purchase a microscope. TreasurerBennie Liles was not present at the meetingso there was no treasurers report. Motionswere made and both the minutes and theproposed budget were approved by votes of

the twenty-three members attending themeeting.

Don MacIntyre asked if BANV could pur-chase DVDs or videos on beekeeping for alibrary. Brenda Kiessling responded that wealready have a library of videotapes and aTV/VCR machine to play them on both cur-

rently stored in her house. ChristopherReed suggested making a written list of allBANV property so we dont lose track ofwhat BANV owns. Brenda Kiessling agreedto make a list of items in the library. AlanFiala offered to print the list in the newslet-ter.

Alan Fiala brought shirts and hats with theBANV logo on them to show to the member-ship and to direct those interested to thewebsite where they can be purchased.(http://www.queensboro.com/banva)

Jim Haskell brought a selection of smokersfrom his collection and gave a very interest-ing talk on the history of smokers, the in-ventors of smokers and the inventorsbeards.

Respectfully Submitted,

Christopher Reed, Secretary

Short New s Notes

For those who intend to take (and pass) theEAS Master Beekeepers exam in the nexttwo or three years, a Master BeekeeperStudy group is going at this time onWednesday evenings at Pat Haskells house.See her for details.

Pat Haskell will be setting up a study groupfor people who are interested in helpingteach the beginning beekeeping class atBANV. All persons seriously interestedplease see her at the May meeting.

There will be a Refresher Class meeting onthe 4th Tuesday in June (June 24) for all ofthis years students, their mentors, and any

other BANV beekeeper who wants to attenda Round Table to discuss what is going on intheir hives at this time. This is kind of adebriefing for the new students to helpthem with any problems they want to talkabout.

The Queen Rearing course given on April 26by Rick Fell and Keith Tignor, was a greatsuccess. The day was absolutely gorgeousand the people attending were very excitedand enthusiastic. At the close of the class,
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there was a drawing for either a nuc (super,top, inner cover, and bottom board alongwith frames and wax) or a Jenter Kit forrearing queens. Everyone attending re-ceived either the nuc or a kit. "Come oneverybody, lets put this equipment towork."

Larry Kelley and Dane Hannum deliveredanother 450 plus packages and extraqueens to Northern Virginia on April 27 atEllanor C. Lawrence Park. That makes closeto 1000 packages Dane and Larry have de-livered to beekeepers through out Virginiathis year alone. Despite the steady drizzle,there was a lot of fun and camaraderie inthe parking lot.

Paul Kent, Chantilly, is offering 5-framemedium nucs at $100. Contact him [email protected].

A lady living in the Del Ray section of Alex-andria would like to have someone keepsome bees on her property. If you are in-terested, please contact Alan Fiala for de-tails at [email protected].

Opportunity for participation with a re-

search project

Reagan Furbish, PSU

I am a student at Penn State working with Dr.Ostiguy on a research project testing honeyfrom all over the country for pesticides. Ifyou or any other beekeepers would be willingto help us, were looking to collect honey thebees store to eat over winter and new honey(not nectar). Well be comparing them to seeif pesticide levels are higher in honey thatbees eat over the winter.

If anyone would be willing to help us, weneed between 1/8 - 1/4 of a cup of honey youharvested from your colonies last fall and thesame amount of honey from an over wintered

hive/colony. It does not matter if this honey isfrom a hive where the colony has died. In fact,if you have a dead out, a sample from this col-ony could be very interesting.

If you send us honey samples we would, ofcourse, keep any information about you com-pletely confidential. Also, we will send youthe results of our research. You will find out ifany pesticides are in your honey, along with

which ones and how much, if any are pre-sent.*

Please send the honey in a leak-proof plasticcontainer to:

Reagan Furbish

501 ASI, Department of Entomology

Penn State

University Park PA 16802

If you have any questions please email me([email protected]) or Dr. Nancy Ostiguy([email protected]). You may also call 814-863-2872 with questions.

If your Beekeeper Association wants to helpus increase the number of samples we are ableto test, we would be happy to accept donations

(to Penn State). All funds received will beused to test as much honey as possible. [Eachsample test costs $100. Ed.]

* It is possible that we will receive more sam-ples than we have the funds to analyze. If thishappens we will randomly select the honeysamples. For any honey that is not chosen, wewill let you know and ask if you mind if wecan hold onto the samples in case we find ad-ditional funding and are able to analyze morehoney. For any honey that is chosen we willsend you the results.
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