Central Coast Beekeepers of Oregon

The first meeting in 2024 will be Wednesday, February 28th at 1:30-3:30 pm at the Newport Public Library. 

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

By Jeremy Egolf

Something I love about living in rural coastal Oregon is the relative lack of light pollution on a clear, dry, bracing winter’s night, perfect for identifying those constellations that fascinated me as a child but I never quite buckled down to observe directly. The flip side of course, is winter’s ice storms and howling winds (witness Lincoln County this January), that test how well we prepared our hives for our climate.

I’ve already heard of a few deadouts (my hand is raised) so the good news is that we’ve identified a provider for our bee bulk order, Henry Storch — see the write up in this newsletter.  Club package and Nuc ordering info here.

This month’s newsletter also outlines the year’s program – mark your calendars! (Presenters 2024). Rick Olson will discuss what to do with all those new packages and nucs you’re thinking of buying, and Max Kuhn follows with what to do if your colonies more than survived and the residents are considering relocating to another state.  Then for April we plan a repeat of last year’s fascinating deadout workshop, so please save a frame or two to bring and discuss, so that a colony’s passing shall not be in vain and that we may learn from our collective experience.

 There’s lots of advice out there on winter preps but the point now is survival – a common thread is that if you find the hive is light (or you’re otherwise concerned about food stores), on a non-rainy day with temperatures above 50 F (55 is better), expose the highest super briefly and pour some granulated sugar on the top bars – should take only a few seconds per hive.

Stay tuned, the year is young.

Hope the the New Year was fabulous, your bees are getting out on the sunny days and your mites are few!  See you in February!

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Link to June 29th presentation:  Preparing for Honey Harvesting

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You will never be solicited by the club or asked for payment (other than annual dues).  Be aware of scam emails.

Honey Bee Videos

Carolyn Breece of OSU Oak Creek Apiary fame has put together a video channel with some great stuff on  many aspects of the honey bee world.  Check it out.

In the Bees with the OSU Honey Bee Lab