Beltane New Moon
On Tuesday night I attended my first meeting of the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association. Down a muddy road near the practice field for women’s soccer at the corner of Larpenteur and Cleveland in St. Paul, part of the St. Paul campus of the U. of M., lie a small, old complex of buildings that house the bee research facilities for the UofM. They’re not much to look at. The bee yard has knock down chain link fence around its blue, gray and tan hive boxes. A building that would fit well on a run down farmstead in northern Minnesota seems to house bee equipment and a more modern, but well used building with a truck dock and sliding door completes the place.
It would be a mistake to take this as a reflection of the quality of the work done by Marla Spivak, her bee wrangler Gary and a small flock of grad students. Some of the finest bee research on colony collapse disorder has been done here as well as the development of a strain, the Minnesota Hygienic, specifically bred to combat it.
When I arrived, the loading dock area had a crowd of maybe 50 people, most, like me, under dressed for the 43 degree rainy weather. A smattering had bee suits. We had been asked to bring them since there would be a live demonstration of dividing a hive. I brought mine and put it on, not to protect me from the bees but from the chill in the evening air.
Two young female grad students got out the smoker, cracked the hive boxes and went through the various moves necessary to complete the division of an over-wintered colony into a parent and a child colony. I did this a couple of weeks ago, so it was review, but helpful anyhow. I had not, for example, tilted the queen cage up so the syrup would not drown her in case it entered her cage. I had also forgotten to remove a frame way earlier, though I did do that on the day I divided the colony.
This was very informal with frames passed around so folks could see larvae, identify drone cells, that sort of thing. There were a lot of absolute newbees there. I felt I had a bit of experience on them, but not much.
After that we retired to Hodson Hall on the campus about a quarter of a mile from the bee yard. There we sat in tiered seats, an entomology class room, evident by the row of glass cases outside containing japanese beetles, cotton moths and water borne larvae. This was informal, too, consisting of a few presentations.
One guy had a method apparently used in Canada to increase the field force available to one set of honey supers. This involves two hive boxes set side by side with a queen excluder over half of each. A board covers the exposed part of each hive box. This allows two queens to lay eggs, increase the number of worker bees. The honey supers get filled up quicker and with better drawn comb for comb honey.
Another guy brought a beautiful top-bar frame in with a free formed comb. Then we had pizza, mingled a bit, heard another presenter, and left. This will be a useful group as time wears on.
