Southern Adirondack Beekeepers Association offers Beginner Beekeeping Class
Beginner beekeeping class registration is open! It is a 4 week class with 2 live and 2 virtual classes. Classes start January 23rd at 7:00. For more information and to register go to https://www.sababees.org/ In order to keep bees, you must learn about bees and beekeeping.
Thursday, October 10 Meeting at Bennington Free Library
August Club Picnic
Mid-August greetings! Pursuant to upcoming events, one announcement and a few reminders:
First, please feel welcome to attend our Club picnic on Thursday, August 29 from 4--7:30 p.m., which will be generously hosted by Peggy Apple-Woods at her home (619 West Mountain Road, Shaftsbury---off of Route 7A). The picnic will be a potluck, and while you're welcome to surprise us, we'd be grateful if you'd let folks know what you're bringing by filling in the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jCkhpbKY_AuWxRQtRqPCQaNugFT7Mkr6aDffdiR0a_o/edit?usp=sharing , which will also serve as your RSVP for the event. On the next blank row of the spreadsheet, please fill in your name, how many people in your party, and what you're bringing. For tech help with the spreadsheet, please e-mail Erin Kiley at benningtonbees@gmail.com .
If you would like to carpool to the Picnic with other Club members, please follow the link here: https://www.groupcarpool.com/t/59ceso . You can add yourself as a Driver by clicking the blue 'Add' icon; you can join someone else's car by clicking their green 'Join' icon; or if everyone's car is full and you still need a ride, you can join the Passenger Waitlist by clicking the orange 'Waitlist' icon. You can also add people to your car from the Waitlist by dragging them to the appropriate spot on the Drivers list. If you need help figuring out how to use the carpool site, please e-mail Erin Kiley at benningtonbees@gmail.com .
Informal Bee Yard Visit this Saturday June 8th (tomorrow), 10 AM-12 noon in Pownal
Next Meeting Thursday, May 2, 6:30pm at Bennington Free Library
the next meeting of the Bennington Beekeepers' Club will take place Thursday, May 2, from 6:30--9:00 p.m., in the Rotary Room of the Bennington Free Library. The library is located at 101 Silver Street in Bennington, and on-street parking is available.
The topic of Thursday's meeting will be an open discussion on spring colony management, including when to 'swap boxes', how to prevent swarming, and how to best leverage the very rapid gains that healthy overwintered colonies can begin making once the weather warms up. We can also talk about installing new packages and nucs as needed.
The first half-hour of the meeting will be a potluck dinner to encourage mingling among attendees: while it's not required that you bring anything, we encourage you to bring a dish to share with the group, as well as a cup, flatware and a plate/bowl for yourself, if possible, to cut down on waste (there is a kitchen sink where you can wash your dishes before leaving). At the conclusion of the meeting, there will be a raffle of donated items: should you wish to donate raffle items, please bring them (items need not be directly related to honeybees or beekeeping). Raffle tickets will be sold during the potluck dinner ($2 each or $10 for 6), and during the raffle, stubs will be drawn until all items have been claimed. Any dues-paying Club member who brings one or more items to donate to the raffle will be given one free raffle ticket.
While the potluck portion of our meeting begins at 6:30, the Library building's front doors close at 7 pm. If you intend to arrive after 7, you will need to notify someone who is at the meeting to let you in. The Library has specifically asked us not to prop open the building's exterior doors, due to issues they've had in the past with unwanted overnight visitors (human and non-).
The Bennington Beekeepers' Club is glad to announce that our March meeting, hosting Dan Conlon of Warm Colors Apiary, will take place Thursday, March 21, from 6:30--9:00 p.m., in the Rotary Room of the Bennington Free Library. The library is located at 101 Silver Street in Bennington, and on-street parking is available.Our guest speaker this month will be Dan Conlon, a commercial beekeeper in western Massachusetts who, together with his wife Bonita, runs Warm Colors Apiary. Warm Colors specializes in Russian Queens and spring Nucs as members of the Russian Honeybee Breeders Association, and was founded in 2000 to produce regional honey from flowers on its eighty acres of woodland, open fields, and wetlands. Warm Colors' mission is to develop, test, and use beekeeping methods that improve the health of the honeybee. Through selective breeding, they endeavor to create and manage a sustainable apiary system that minimizes the use of harmful chemicals and employs the natural defenses an heritable behaviors shown to improve the honeybee's mite tolerance and resistance to disease. For more information on Warm Colors Apiary, please see their website ( https://www.warmcolorsapiary.com/ ). The title of Thursday's presentation will be 'Honeybee Health and Genetic Selection: Defensive Mechanisms of Honeybees', and it will describe and review Warm Colors' strategy for keeping healthy colonies, improving Queen resistance to disease and pests, as well as suggest management strategies that helps bees. Emphasis will also be placed on how this works for the Russian Breeders' Association. We are fortunate to host Dan, and hope that you will come listen to his talk with us, where beekeepers of all levels will learn.
The meeting will consist of a potluck and chat from 6:30--7:00, a business meeting from 7:00--7:30, and the talk by Dan Conlon will follow until the raffle commences at 8:45. Donated items will be welcome. For details, please see the attached agenda.In hopes of seeing you next Thursday---Erin Kiley
Bennington County Beekeepers Meeting - March 21, 2024 6:30-9:00 PM
Bennington Free Library, upstairs
Our next meeting will begin with a 6:30 Potluck Supper and a Business Meeting at 7:00. If you arrive after 7:00 the library doors will be locked but there will be a sign on the left hand door with a number to call. Then one of us will come down and let you in!
Our speaker will be Dan Conlon of Warm Colors Apiary in Deerfield MA. Dan and his wife Bonita are commercial beekeepers in western Massachusetts specializing in certified Russian queens and spring nucs. They are members of the Russian Honey Bee Breeders Association. Dan is a past president of the Massachusetts Beekeepers Association. He has worked to develop, test and use beekeeping methods that imporve the health of honey bees through selective breeding and sustainable apiary work that minimizes the use of harmful inputs. https://www.warmcolorsapiary.com
