Hello beekeepers and honey bee enthusiasts!
June is going to be very busy for us. Our apiaries are keeping us busy AND it’s crunch time for the Honey Bee Festival.
Honey Bee Festival
Saturday, June 22th from 10am-4pm at the Chesterfield Fairgrounds
You do not have to be a beekeeper or a member of a bee club to volunteer for the festival. Volunteers can be kids, family, friends, co-workers, etc. The only requirement is a smile, flexibility and a willingness to help. All volunteers receive a free HBF tee-shirt, learn a lot and have a ton of fun!
More details, including a signup form, can be found here:https://forms.gle/vvwUjwffUB8xhuLS9
Here are a few things you can do to get involved:
👉Choose something to bake for the bake sale
👉Loan the club a canopy or table
👉Allow RPBBA to extract your honey supers
👉Supply drones for the Drone Petting Zoo
👉Spread the word on social media: our website, a flier, and an event setup are all on Facebook and all can be shared
A Message from Your Friendly Bake Sale Lead, Pam Kimball
Howdy fellow beekeepers and bakers!
Rockwood Honeybee Festival will soon be here and it’s time to start thinking about baking some goodies for the bake sale! Don’t forget the bake sale makes money for the club….so get your thinking caps on as to what to make!
What to Make:
You can make cookies, cupcakes (without icing), breads, snickerdoodles, etc.
Put one serving size per individual baggie.
Label what is in baggie (for example, toffee chip cookies).
Make sure to identify if it has nuts or is gluten-free.
When to Bring:
-
Friday- you can drop-off baked goods at Chesterfield Fairgrounds from 8am to 5 pm. There will be a table inside the building labeled ‘Baked goods’. Just drop them off there.
-
Saturday-we will have a table near the entrance and the kids area. The festival starts at 10 am so try to bring before or around10.
Happy baking and see you at the festival!
For the June club meeting, we will have Jason Aldridge, Ecosystem Restorationist from Undoing Ruin https://undoingruin.com/ lead us in a short walk and talk around the paved path around the nature center. We will discuss what makes a healthy habitat for pollinators, other animals and ourselves. Jason is a specialist in habitat restoration and establishing new native habitats.
After the walk-n-talk, Don et al;, will lead a discussion about the HoneyBee Festival and how we can ensure that we are prepared.
Waaaaay back in the day :), Krisit Orcutt and Ken Woodard wanted to bring more attention to the nature center and to reach out to young people to help them understand that pollinators are a part of the backyard environment. Norfolk, VA was putting on a festival so Kristi and Ken decided that the metro Richmond region should have one as well!
The 1st festival celebrated the installation of the observation hive in the Rockwood Park Nature Center. County supervisors alerted the press and the festival was “on and popping”, as the youngsters say.
We are on the 13th festival (took a pause during the height of covid) and the current HBF looks like the first one, only much larger. The early festivals also had face painting, vendors, honey sales, a bake sale, drone petting zoo, Buzz Talks and more.
Here’s to another successful HBF! And huge thanks to Kristi and Ken who had the forethought and the follow-through to make this a part of the fabric of the metro Richmond and Virginia community.
Bee Vocabulary – “Bee Space”
Ever wonder why beekeepers push their frames tightly together in their hives? Our old friend, Lorenzo Langstroth, discovered that bees will build excess comb in any space larger than ⅜ inch. Any space less than ⅜ inch, bees will fill with propolis and/or wax. Proper bee space allows bees to move around in the colony (back to back) and allows you, as the beekeeper, to inspect the hive without destroying carefully built comb.
This Month in the Hive (June)
Hives that haven’t swarmed will be running over with bees and the brood nest may very well extend across two supers. The population of your strongest hives may exceed 50,000 workers. The queen’s rate of egg laying may drop a little this month. However, she should be moving around the brood nest, laying eggs in cells that have been cleaned from prior use.
A strong hive may cap as much as 30-40 pounds of honey in June, if good nectar flows are nearby and moisture is sustained in the soil. However, most of the nectar flows are over by the end of the month. But, if soil moisture persists into July, you may want to plan on a small second harvest later in the summer.
Heat can be a serious challenge for the hive at this time. Look for bees bringing in water and placing it around the hive to evaporate for the cooling effect. Watch for swarm cells, wax moths, ants, mice and small hive beetles attacking the combs. If a hive is so weak in June that it can not defend itself against beetles, ants or moths, then you should consider combining it with a much stronger hive.
Watch for supers above the queen excluder where all the center frames in the super are full of capped honey. Move the full center frames to the outside edges of the super, and move less full frames to the center. This will assist the bees to fill and cap all the frames completely.
Inspect the hives weekly to make certain your hives are healthy and the queen is doing her job. You do not need to see a queen if you see a good pattern of eggs, wet larvae (or “worms”) and capped brood. Supers full of honey may be removed at any time you are prepared to begin extraction or keep them in the freezer. (You do not want to store supers of honey for more than a day or two at room temperature, due to ants, spiders, wax moths, and dust.)
Make sure your bees have a source of water within 200 feet of the hive. You may increase your hives by splitting strong colonies after the harvest. There is a slight chance of a need to add more honey supers this month. Keep watching for swarming which may still occur.
Decide if your hives are going to have an upper entrance. If so, you may want to drill a 1 inch circular hole in a super (not close to a handle), which hole can be guarded by the bees in summer and plugged with a cork during the winter. Some beekeepers screen over the hand hole in the inner cover, and then prop up the hive cover slightly to provide ventilation, but not enough to permit access to rodents and large insects.
Confirm queen orders for July hive splits.
[From https://buzzwordhoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Northern-Virginia-Honeybee-Annual-Cycle.pdf]
What’s in Bloom (according to Maymont)
1st Week: Magnolia, Tree Lilac, Rhododendron, Azalea, Nandina, Smoke Tree, Rose, Waterlily, Daylily, Yucca, Annuals, Perennials, European Linden, Mock Orange, Weigelia, Laburnum, Calycanthus, Abelia
2nd Week: Magnolia, Golden Raintree, Mimose, Rose, Azalea, Nandina, Hydrangea, Sourwood, Waerlily, Daylily, Annuals, Perennials, Catalpa, Tree Lilac, Abelia, Calycanthus
3rd Week: Magnolia, Golden Raintree, Mimosa, Sourwood, Rose, Azalea, Daylily, Annuals, Perennials, Catalpa
4th Week: Magnolia, Golden Raintree, Mimosa, Sourwood, Rose, Azalea, Daylily, Annuals, Perennials, Catalpa
https://maymont.org/explore/gardens/whats-in-bloom/
Final Word
If you are not a member of RPBBA, we encourage you to join and be active. You can join on our website. Meetings are open to non-members also. Come meet some other beekeepers and find out what RPBBA is all about.
If you have not volunteered for the Honey Bee Festival, please do so. This is a major educational and of course, fun event for our bee club and the community.
We are always looking for ways to improve communications in the club. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please let me know.
-Hollee
Hollee Freeman
Communications
Check us out at rockwoodbeekeepers.com!
Like us on Facebook!
Join our Facebook RPBBA Practical Beekeeping Group!
Keep up with what RPBBA is doing, see Calendar of Events!
*****************************************************************************
This is the official Rockwood Park Backyard Beekeepers email. RPBBA will never share your email with anyone outside of the organization or for non-club-related business without your permission. If you wish to update your email or be removed from our email list please complete this form.
Rockwood Park Backyard Beekeepers 