Heart of Illinois Beekeepers Association
General Club Meeting Minutes From February Meeting on Friday 2020/02/07
Illinois Central College, Lecture & Recital Hall (Room 127F)
Sean Rennau called the meeting to order at 6:32.
Sean introduced Tim Wilbanks of Heritage Honeybees and welcomed him to the stage.
Tim Wilbanks spoke until 8pm and then took about 45 minutes of question and answer. The main points of Tim’s presentation: (see below for full version)
• Package production is mostly in California and Southeast.
• Spring is the busiest time for package suppliers and can begin as early as mid-January depending on the weather. Hive populations are fed to ensure strong queens and begin to be split into stock boxes.
• Next, the first round of queens must be grafted. When ripe, they are put into baby nucs, then cell finishers, then an incubator for the final night and finally into bee yards that are selected for good mating topography. They are allowed to lay for about 3 weeks so that their pattern can be evaluated.
• As populations reach capacity and queens are proven, the shaking of packages can commence.
• The transport conditions are very important for package health: time in the package should be minimized and the airflow, temperature, and humidity in the trailer should be tightly controlled.
• In the summer, Beekeepers are typically doing the same tasks as hobbyists but on larger scale.
• In the fall and early winter, massive quantities of woodenware are built from scratch and feed cans filled. Beeyards are swept of debris for fire prevention.
Sean recognized Caitlin Murphy for her Beehive and Flowers for Bees informational board.
Steve made motion for club to buy two packages to be added to the group. Seconded by Roger Garrick. Passed by club.
Pam Tonka presented about insurance. There was an increase of $28 from last year which she feels is acceptable. We also had to pay $75 for a rider to name ICC as an additional insured. Chuck Gold moved to accept, Ralph Krall seconded. Motion passed.
Announcement from Chuck Gold that Bill Mottlet is selling two hand-crank extractors for $150. Pictures will be included in the newsletter.
Pam Tonka read the treasures report. The Association has a current balance of $7,869.15. The introduction to Beekeeping Workshop produced an income of $2,600 and 33 new members. The cost of food, books, etc. resulted in a net income of $340 for the event. Motion to approve by Michael Peil, seconded by Mark Kilty. Motion passed.
Sean requested help promoting Michael Bush meeting on February 22.
Erica Taylor read the meeting minutes from October 2019 meeting, which was the end-of-year banquet. Mark Sherman moved to accept, Mark Kilty seconded. Motion approved.
Luke Harvey mentioned that he and Steve had video recording of the introduction workshop and Tim Wilbanks’ presentation and the Association should consider having a YouTube page.
Ralph moved to adjourn. Nick Dunne seconded. Meeting adjourned at 9:13pm.
Total attendance: 56 people
Minutes submitted by Secretary, Erica Taylor
Full notes on Tim Wilbanks presentation:
• What the big-operation package producers are doing
• Tim brings in packages from Georgia & northern California and interfaces directly with the customers, and to bigger bee clubs, commercial beekeepers
• Tim runs 400 colonies and leases them out
• Need healthy & strong bees to produce packages: Pollen, nectar, good weather, low stressors
• Overwintering in California has been replaced now by Cold storage in Idaho – keeps the conditions very stable (35-38 degrees, consistent temp, oxygen & CO2 levels controlled). Look up Brandon Hopkins in Washington University.
• East Texas has become a popular place to raise bees – good weather & lots of pollen
• Georgia is already shaking packages in early February, got first pollen in January
• Kona bees in Hawaii is already producing queens
• Feeding 5-10K hives requires 3 tanker trucks of syrup. Due to no longer having native/natural forage
• October -December
o Woodshop work
o Canning syrup
o Feeding & treatment
o Preparing queen rearing caps
• January
o Feeding
• February
o California – almond pollens
o Begin grafting when drones are maturing. Use one day old larvae (4 days after egg was laid by breeder queen). Saturate the area around the queen yard with hives that have 3 deeps full of drone comb. Queens in those hives are selectively controlled as are the breeder queen). Look for lots of royal jelly to indicate strong colonies which makes stronger queens.
o 1st cells are ripe 11 days later
o Shaking stock boxes from production colonies to populate baby nus in queen mating yards. A baby nuc is a 5 frame nuc with screen bottom, big gap in middle. 5 lbs of young bees and a couple frames of honey and pollen. Put in racks of queen cells in the gaps. Bees will quickly start prepping the queen cells. In 24 hours queens can be moved to cell finishers. 3 frames of unsealed brood into top of two-deep hive with a queen contained in the bottom box. This will draw nurse bees up to work the queen cells. These are fed daily unless nectar flow is very strong.
o 15 day old queen cells are removed and put in incubators. On day 16 they are put into a “Baby Nuc” for queen rearing. Double sided colony. Stock boxes are filled with bees, about ¾ lbs, stored overnight in cold room, then transferred to queen yards. These are selected for good topographical features (consistent canopy height). Queen cell added, closed up for 30 hours to get familiarized with queen. Tip: best to install packages late at night. No screen bottom boards until a brood next is started, they will think it is too drafty to stay.
o Check laying patterns of queens. If good, will be caged. Hope for 12-20 drone matings.
• Queen quality assessment lab – Dr. Tarpey at NC State Queen Quality Lab
o Morphological measures – weight, length, girth
o Pathogen & disease check
o Insemination success & mating number – how much stored sperm & how many are viable
o Provides an overall score (A-F)
o It is expensive. Ship the queens live.
o Queens are as good or better as they ever been but we’re seeing they don’t last more than 2 years
o Drone quality analysis is in development
• March
o Weather dictates time
o 3rd week 0 queens ready for caging
o Shaking packages begins
o Must find and grab the queen. Tip – white burr comb indicates you have a flow on
o Frames are set out next to colony in upright position, not laying around. Easier to keep the order that way.
o Determine how much brood is in the colony. Need to leave enough bees to keep brood warm considering the weather that is coming.
o Use funnel and shake into the cages. Weigh them. Put feed cans in and at same time add queen package. Cool in a dark room. Crate on truck with plenty of room for airflow.
o Transported at 50-60 degrees in specialized trailers. Tandem driver teams only stop for gas and bathroom. Georgia to Wisconsin in 18 hours, California to Wisconsin in 36 hours. Must circulate warm moist air out, so only stack enclosed trailers half full. Temp monitors throughout.
o Want to see bees nicely clustered, not many dead on bottom.
• April- May
o Packages non-stop
o Grafting, caging queens 7 days/week
• May-June-July-August
o Equalizing
o Feeding
o Treating
o Cleaning beeyards – raking, cutting limbs, etc. for fire prevention
• Beekeeping enemies are the same as for small scale keepers.
• What should we do to save bees? Get to know successful beekeepers. Sponsor 4H, involve the neighborhood kids.
Q&A
• How to handle losses when they’re on share. Put it on paper – how is honey split & is it taken in honey or profit from honey. Who is responsible for requeening.
• Permits for trucking across state lines – need health certificate from every selling operation for enter Wisconsin. Varies by state.
• How do you handle the extra mite load that will be present in drone yard? Don’t treat with strong chemicals because you will impeded queen performance. Can treat with naturals or leave until later in season because bees can outpace the mites for awhile, however that may result in ultimately collapsing the colony.
• Tim uses half-doses of formic acid from august onwards whenever mite count is above 3/100. Treat mites early to keep virus saturation low. Also uses oxalic acid. Testing the glycerin on towel method by Randy Oliver.
• Know that when you buy a breed of queen bee, the mother bee may be one specific type but the mating drones are going to be all sorts, especially from California. In Tim’s limited testing, has not seen one breed outperform the other.
• Varroa easy check – everyone should get one. Record the results. If you have many hives, test 10% every time you work hives. Randy Oliver has a good spreadsheet for tracking, on his website. Treat anything above 3/100. Get very aggressive for 10+/100.
• Best chances of catching swarms is in places that you’ve historically collect swarms, and near commercial keepers.
• Bees are typically in the packages for 48-24 hours before truck begins haul.
• Why has price for packages increased so much in last 10 years. Higher demand and hobbyists are willing to pay more. Higher costs from California especially. If you compare price of queens and packages to prices of retail honey, the ratio hasn’t changed much since the 1980s. As a hobby, its still cheaper than fishing, hunting, golfing, boating.
• Look up Illinois’ tax abatement. Bees are livestock so if you have a handful of hives and 3+ acres you can be re-zoned as agricultural.