Category Archives: AABA Events



October 6th, 2021, AABA Introduction to Beekeekeeping

AABA Introduction to Beekeeping 

Zoom Meeting:
Wednesday, October 6, 2021
7:00 – 8:00 PM

Are you thinking about having honey bees in your backyard or just interested in bees? Find out what is involved in taking care of honey bees and the time and financial commitment involved. We’ll give an overview of setting up for bees, seasonal management, maintaining healthy bees, and the rewards of keeping bees (not just honey!) that will be covered in greater detail if you take the AABA Short Course.
Sign up to receive AABA newsletters at aabees.org to be notified of course news and the Zoom invitation. The meeting will be recorded and a link will be available after October 6, 2021.

Anne Arundel Beekeepers Association is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

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Registration for 2022 Short Course

Beekeeping – A Honey of a Hobby

Each winter AABA offers a beginning beekeeping course for anyone interested in learning the basics of beekeeping.   Registration is now closed.  Register as early as possible as the class usually fills to capacity.

The course consists of seven (7) sessions and covers the following material:

  • Introduction to Beekeeping
  • Equipment
  • Honey Bee Biology
  • Spring / Summer Management
  • Fall / Winter Management
  • Maintaining Healthy Bees
  • Nectar Sources
  • Honey Extraction
  • Products of the Hive

In the final class, students will be shown how to install bees. Many students order bees during the class and start their first hives after completing the course. By that time, even those completely new to beekeeping will have the knowledge and the connections to start their own apiary.

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September 21st, 2021, AABA Meeting

The AABA meeting will be held on Tuesday Sept 21.  It will be our first Hybrid meeting.  We will be meeting in person, and still allow a zoom meeting.  For people at the nature center, bring your veils, we will try to go into a hive at 6:30. We will require social distancing within the meeting room, and request everyone wear a mask to safe guard the health of everyone in the club.

6:30  Q and A.  What are you seeing in your hives?  If you are here in person, you can go out the the hives.  If you are on zoom, some people will remain available to answer questions.

7:00   Assessing your hives in preparation for fall. (Mehalick with support from BIP) We will be covering assessing queen patterns, counting brood size, and right sizing your hives for winter.   Presentation slides are available here:.

7:30   Emma deVries of Earthstar gardening will be presenting:  “Pollinator Gardens the Regenerative Way- Plans and Practices”.

Now is the perfect time to start your pollinator garden.  Emma will cover Pollinator Gardening the Regenerative Way

    1. Design- Planning a pollinator habitat.
    2. Planting – Nitty gritty of creating the garden.
    3. Maintenance- Regenerative practices through the seasons.

Emma DeVriesEmma deVries is a garden designer in the Chesapeake Bay Region, certified Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional, Watershed Steward candidate, and hobbyist beekeeper. After the obstacles presented by 2020, Emma decided to pursue her entrepreneurial dream of working with local communities to conserve soil and quality, agriculture, and wildlife biodiversity through a practical approach to garden design and maintenance services.

Introduced to nature early in life, her formative years were spent playing among the flower gardens, cabbage rows, and rotating pasture animals in the Biodynamic farm at the Fair Oaks Rudolf Steiner College, while her mom baked fresh bread for the staff lunches. At three months old, her father and mother hiked her up a mountain in a backpack, and throughout her childhood, her father led numerous back-country excursions on the Pacific North Coast or Sierra Nevada Desolation Wilderness.

After the obstacles presented by 2020, Emma decided to pursue her entrepreneurial dream of working with local communities to conserve soil and quality, agriculture, and wildlife biodiversity through a practical approach to garden design and maintenance services.

This will be our first in person meeting in over 18 months.   
Our meeting location is:
Arlington Echo Outdoor Education Center.  
Come join us!

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June 15th, 2021 AABA Meeting

Our next AABA meeting will be held on June 15, 2021

We are proud to invite Barry Thompson as our guest speaker

6:30:  Open Q and A led by President Ryan Smith
7-8:  Stings, adverse reactions and treatment
8-8:30:  A 30 foot level look at  practical tips or points to consider as a beekeeper

Dave ThompsonBarry started with honey bees in 1954 and has kept bees as a sideliner with as many as 150 colonies. Drafted in 1968, he spent a 30 year career in the USAF as a physician-geneticist, in a variety of roles, from staff physician to medical center commander to Command Surgeon, U.S. Air Forces, Europe (repositioning assets after the first Gulf War). After ten years of beekeeping, he sustained two episodes of anaphylaxis, was desensitized with venom, and returned to keeping “the girls” thereafter. Barry is active in county, state, national, and international honey bee and pollinator protection efforts. He is certified as a Master Beekeeper by the Eastern Apicultural Society. in 2020, he received the EAS Divelbiss Award 2020 for education of the public about beekeeping.

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AABA October Meeting Minutes October 20, 2020

Main Speaker – Cybil Preston, State Apiary Inspector Maryland Beekeeping, Bee Inspection,
What’s New with MD Dept of Agriculture

Cybil reported that beekeeping in Maryland is growing in all categories, which she attributes to the Short
Courses and community outreach provided by the area bee associations. Cybil, four part-time
inspectors, and her two trained dogs inspected 4430 colonies last year. The dogs make a difference in
the number and speed of colony inspections for American Foul Brood, but they only work during winter
when bees are not flying. The dogs primarily inspect the ~2000 colonies that travel from Maryland to
pollinate California almonds in February. Cybil and the other inspectors handle the other seasons.

The statistics for 2019:
# Beekeepers: 2161
# Apiaries: 2716
# Colonies: 15,923

The Apiary Program is short several inspectors and hopes to hire additional inspectors next February.
Anne Arundel is one of the counties that needs an inspector. Cybil has been covering the territory this
season. Contact her if you are interested in becoming an inspector.

Cybil also stated that Maryland is monitoring for Asian hornets (aka “Murder hornets”), but despite
fielding 800 calls reporting this insect, they were found to be European hornets (which have been here
since the 1800s) and cicada killers that people never noticed in their gardens before.

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June 20th, 2020 AABA Meeting

Dear Anne Arundel County Beekeepers,
We are going to do a zoom meeting, to try and catch up with each other this upcoming Tuesday from 7-9, since we have missed several meetings and the conclusion of the short course.  Zoom may be new to some of you, so please read the how to use Zoom section at the end.

Our topic is twofold  “Dearth is coming” and “Preparing for winter bees”. This will be given by group members Kim Mehalick and David Clark.

We will start at 7:00pm, and will follow the talk with a chance to do an open session.
We will end by 9pm.

This is a good opportunity  and perfect time to discuss  steps beekeepers should take during dearth. The nectar flow is slowing down and will end in some areas very soon.  Dearth beekeeping is different than dealing with the happy hives of April and May.  Learn some hints on keeping things easier on you and your bees.

Meanwhile this is a critical time to prepare your bees for winter success.  August 1 is the beginning of the bee year in Maryland.  The steps you take now will help your hives to be stronger, and better prepared for winter.

The DC Beekeepers Alliance is loaning us their zoom account.  The Zoom Room will open 30 minutes before the scheduled agenda. We strongly recommend that new users get an early start to learn the tool and deal with glitches.

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August 17th, 2021 AABA Meeting

Our next meeting is Tuesday August 17th

6:30  Q and A with President Ryan Smith.  Open discussion, bring your questions and observations
7:00 Clyde Strang, EAS Masterbeekeeper: Wax Moth
7:30 Bill Hingst  “Making Mead the Supercharged Way”
https://aabees.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Mead-Supercharged.pdf

Making Mead the Supercharged Way

It is said that to make mead all you need is honey, water, yeast, and time.

That’s true, but there’s a better way. There are basic rules of “country” winemaking which served me well for many years.I handled honey like I would any other fruit that came my way. It wasn’t the traditional method for making, but it turned out to be an award-winning process.

My first batch of mead took five years to turn from undrinkable to ambrosia.That’s a typical timeframe for meads.Some competitions require meads be at least five years old to be eligible to even enter, although most only require meads to be one or two years old.

That first batch won blue ribbons from the Delaware Beekeepers Association, Maryland Beekeepers Association, and the Eastern Apicultural Society. I refined the process over the years, producing winners in just two or three years. Then I was called to assist a local university yeast professor who wanted to produce a commercially saleable mead in 90 days using wild yeasts collected from the bodies of honey bees.  It was a failure, but I adopted his method of “pushing the yeast” for quicker fermentation.

On the eve of the first mead competition of the season my experimental mead tasted pretty good to me, so I bottled it as well as another batch that was a proven winner.  My fellow mead makers tasted both and they all said to go with the winner. I entered my one year old instead. That mead won blue ribbons at the DBA, MSBA, and EAS competitions that year.

I’ll be teaching that method, via Zoom, during the August meeting of the Anne Arundel Beekeeping Association.

Bill Hingst, Beekeeper
I’m not much of a beekeeper but an award winning wine and mead maker.

I got into beekeeping because I needed a sugar source if Western civilization crumbled. Bartering alcohol for the necessities of life seemed like a no-brainer — and my wines will be more popular than ever. Not long after I took my first beekeeping class I harvested 40 pounds of honey from a dead out in a fallen maple tree. The property owner wasted his 20 pounds of honey by cooking with it, adding it to tea, etc. I turned my 20 pounds into mead.

Beekeeping is hard and there is no guarantees of a payoff in honey. Removing unwanted beehives from buildings is easy.  You get free bees, free honey, and you’ve made some homeowner very happy. I’ve rescued over 1 million animals between removing hives and catching swarms. Tiny stinging animals, but they count. Bees in a building have survived viruses and varroa mites without the help of a beekeeper. They’re made of sterner stuff than the bees from Georgia, and I want them to go forth and multiply. I encourage the really strong hives to swarm, and hopefully repopulate the woods around the area. I don’t harvest honey from my survivor bees and don’t bother them much. Let nature take its course.


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July 20th, 2021 AABA Meeting

Join us at the  AABA meeting on Tuesday July 20th to learn about Mission Beelieve, followed by how to prepare a winning honey show entry.

The honey show season is up on us.  Learn tips and tricks on how to prepare wining honey show entries.  Our state fair is open this year, so are various county fairs.  Also the MSBA honey show is ON for this year.   Win some prize money!

6:30 President Ryan Smith moderates Open Questions and Answers and a discussion of what we are seeing in our hives.

7:00 Tristan Bannon and Monica Schmitt-Rutledge:  Mission Beelieve

Celebrating their first year in operation, Mission Beelieve is using beekeeping to help first responders and veterans.  Learn more about their organization and how you can help.

7:30 Monica Schmitt-Rutledge:   How to have winning Honey Show Entries

Monica Schmitt co-founder and director of Mission Beelieve is also the vice president of the Carroll County Beekeepers Association.  She competed in the Extracted Honey Division (280 total entries) in the EAS Honey Show and won the Best in Show Silver Plate for her locust honey.

Monica will offer guidance on how to prepare your honey show entries for success

Anne Arundel Beekeepers Association is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: AABA meeting: July 20th, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86882396102?pwd=K29yTmloTXRhZGN0ay80ME0wTmE0Zz09
Meeting ID: 868 8239 6102
Passcode: 483237

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May 18th, 2021 AABA Meeting

Our next AABA meeting will be held on May18th.

6:30  Open Q and A with President Ryan Smith.  This is an opportunity to ask your questions and get input from fellow club members.

7:00  Lessons learned from the MCBA Training Apiary, Maureen Jais-Mick
Maureen Jais-Mick, Manager of the Montgomery County Beekeepers Association Bee Yard, will speak on “Lessons from the MCBA Training Apiary,” including the yard’s purposes, apiary beekeeping philosophy, legal requirements, bee yard rules, and day-to-day management.

7:30 Beekeeping in Europe, Allan Storm
Storm will provide a discussion about beekeeping in Europe.  By late Middle Ages, beekeeping was well established in Europe due to the demands for wax and candles by the church.  Almost every region had its traditional form of housing for bees.  Some had hinged doors or open backs that could be covered until time to remove honey.  He will also talk about some of the European regulations and how they manage the threats of honey bee health, hive management, and honey quality control.

Maureen Jais-Mick is a member of the Montgomery County Beekeepers Association and has been a beekeeper since 2013. In 2018, she was tasked with managing the Club’s apiary in Wheaton MD. Since then, she has overseen upgrading of the facilities and also increasing learning opportunities at the yard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Allan Storm:  As an avid connoisseur of honey, I have been fascinated by honey bees and beekeeping since my childhood.  I have traveled the world and been extremely blessed to have seen so many various ways of managing honey bees and tasted honey.  However,  it wasn’t until I settled down in Maryland, after retiring from the U.S. Marine Corps and returning from a DoD civilian job overseas, that I befriended a local beekeeper who starting mentoring me as I got my own hives.  He provided me “Beekeeping For Dummies” and my own beekeeping adventure began.  Besides keeping bees in Maryland, I have also kept bees in Europe, Belgium, where I started learning the science of beekeeping.  I have traveled and worked with bees in Spain, the Balkans and Turkey – where 1 in 200 people are beekeepers in Slovenia. The etymology of “Balkan” as a Turkish combination of “bal” meaning blood and “kan” meaning honey.  I have studied at the Beekeeping Academy of Slovenia and now have bees within Slovenian AZ hives.  I have completed the University of Montana’s online Beekeeping Certificate program which consists of three university-level courses at the apprentice, journeyman, and master levels, culminating in a certificate as a “Master Beekeeper”.   I also attended the 1st honey sensory training course taught by the Italian National Register of Experts in Sensory Analysis of Honey; developing methods of sensory analysis to taste and evaluate honey at an academic level.   And completed the 1st course in Natural Beekeeping taught by the University of Montana – integrating honey bee ecology into modern beekeeping.  With close to 50 hives I continue to enjoy the art, science and challenges of beekeeping.

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April 20th, 2021 AABA Meeting

Our next AABA meeting will be held on April 20.

6:30  Open Q and A with President Ryan Smith

7:00  Mike Mehalick presenting on “What to consider before popping the top”.

This is a discussion of considerations before you do the hive inspection, and first steps to making your hive inspections a success. Mike Mehalick has been keeping bees since 2012. He, his wife Kim and son James keep about 30-60 hives on their property and various outyards as part of their apiary “The Queen’s Honey”.  His favorite beekeeping activity- catching and marking newly mated queens from his own queen rearing experiments.

7:30  Dr. Keith Delaplane speaking about Honey Bee Polyandry and Why It Matters to Beekeepers

Keith Delaplane started keeping bees while he was growing up on his family corn, soy, and hog farm in Indiana. He pursued this interest in grad school at LSU under the mentorship of Dr. John Harbo who was a co-developer of the Varroa Sensitive Hygiene line of honey bee. Keith assumed his current post as Professor of Entomology at the University of Georgia in 1990 where he and his students study social evolution, honey bee IPM, pollination, and foraging ecology.

Anne Arundel Beekeepers Association is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: AABA April Meeting
Time: Apr 20, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 851 5106 2204
Passcode: 744265
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Dial by your location
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
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Meeting ID: 851 5106 2204
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