Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Moon<\/p>\n
On Tuesday night I attended my first meeting of the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They’re not much to look at.\u00a0 The bee yard has knock down chain link fence around its blue, gray and tan hive boxes.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 A smattering had bee suits.\u00a0 We had been asked to bring them since there would be a live demonstration of dividing a hive.\u00a0 I brought mine and put it on, not to protect me from the bees but from the chill in the evening air.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I did this a couple of weeks ago, so it was review, but helpful anyhow.\u00a0 I had not, for example, tilted the queen cage up so the syrup would not drown her in case it entered her cage.\u00a0 I had also forgotten to remove a frame way earlier, though I did do that on the day I divided the colony.<\/p>\n
This was very informal with frames passed around so folks could see larvae, identify drone cells, that sort of thing.\u00a0 There were a lot of absolute newbees there.\u00a0 I felt I had a bit of experience on them, but not much.<\/p>\n
After that we retired to Hodson Hall on the campus about a quarter of a mile from the bee yard.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This was informal, too, consisting of a few presentations.<\/p>\n
One guy had a method apparently used in Canada to increase the field force available to one set of honey supers.\u00a0 This involves two hive boxes set side by side with a queen excluder over half of each.\u00a0 A board covers the exposed part of each hive box.\u00a0 This allows two queens to lay eggs, increase the number of worker bees.\u00a0 The honey supers get filled up quicker and with better drawn comb for comb honey.<\/p>\n
Another guy brought a beautiful top-bar frame in with a free formed comb.\u00a0\u00a0 Then we had pizza, mingled a bit, heard another presenter, and left.\u00a0 This will be a useful group as time wears on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Moon On Tuesday night I attended my first meeting of the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association.\u00a0 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 … Continue reading Bee Diary: May 13, 2010<\/span>