Arlington Echo Nature Center Millersville MD

6:30 Hive dive and/or general Q and A discussion
***Please bring your veil and protective gear if you are going on the hive dive. This will be weather dependent. There will always be beekeepers in the room to answer your questions.

7:00 Candee Van Iderstine: Practical tips for making your hive inspections easier
A wonderful walk through various tools and hacks that work to make your beekeeping work more enjoyable and easier

7:30 David Dobbs: Shaking Bees: Why and How it’s done

Dave recently had the experience of shaking over 175 hives making 184, 3 lb packages with a commercial beekeeper. The video and pictures are from April 15^th at Larriland Farm Mt Airy Maryland. Dave will show a video and walk us through the process and business side of this all day event.

Dave Dobbs

Dave has been a beekeeper for 7 years. Having flower and vegetable gardens prompted him to get into beekeeping for the pollination qualities.

After seeing an “undertaker Bee” throw a dead bee off the bottom board – Dave was hooked on the intricacies of honey bee biology and their social interactions.

He expanded his apiary to 8 colonies his second year and started producing honey and candles for sale. Being an equipment geek, Dave used his proceeds and started purchasing larger production extraction equipment and now has a “Honey House” with a full sideliner set up. He expanded to twelve colonies the next year and since then has had as many as 20.

Already having an LLC for his Cyber Security Consulting company called Baltimore Information Group (BIG), he expanded into another division calling it BIG Bee Apiary.

A lifetime teacher, Dave has shared what he knows about bees including: teaching a Life Science Course and starting bee colonies at a Montessori School, using his bee business as the case study for the Entrepreneur 101 course at AACC, supports 2-3 outreach events a year and submits 6-7 products to be judged at the Howard County Fair.

He also enjoys queen rearing, splitting, and collecting pollen. This year, he has a local scientific study determining active dates of the local honey flow of Western Howard County region using a procedure in Bee Culture Magazine. In addition, he is a member of the Howard County “Bee City Pollination Committee”, which supports the education and hands-on discussion of honey bee pollination in the county. He has a registered “Pollinator Garden” on his property and continues to expand it every year.

Dave has been very active in the Howard County Beekeepers Association starting with establishing the t-shirt committee, hosting bait box builds, mentoring 3-5 newbees every year, is the out-yard coordinator, has been Vice President and currently sits on the Board of Directors as Past President. Dave is currently working on becoming a Maryland Certified Honey Judge and is a candidate for the EAS Master Beekeeper certification having passed 2 of the 4 exams at last year’s convention.

This will be an in person meeting at the Arlington Echo Nature Center, Millersville MD.

6:30 President Ryan Smith, open hive dive at Arlington Echo  *** Bring your veils
7:00 David Clark, Skill:  How to wire wax foundation properly
7:30 Russell Sprangel, Raising queens using grafting

Russell Sprangel is the current Vice President of Howard County Beekeepers and the past President and VP of Carroll County Beekeepers.  He is very active in Carrol County over his five years as a beekeeper attending every meeting and almost every outreach event.  These events are  to educate the community on the benefits of beekeeping and supporting all pollinators.  He teaches during the beekeeping calendar in the clubs training Apiary, all any aspects of beekeeping students ask for.  Early in his second year of beekeeping he decided that queen rearing could not be the black magic everyone said, and you should not need 10 years of experience to do it.  So, with a little book learning, and no formal instruction, he jumped in to find what the fuss was about.  Turns out it is magical, but in a good way, and can be one of the most rewarding aspects of beekeeping even on the small backyard scale.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022
6:30 pm (Eastern Time)
 
Dewey Caron will present on Deadouts: (dead colonies have tales to tell) and Caring for Smaller, Weaker Colonies (to make them stronger)
 
 
6:30  Opening questions and answers moderated by President Ryan Smith
7:00 Club Announcements
7:05   Dr. Dewey Caron

Dr. Dewey Caron is  Emeritus Professor of Entomology & Wildlife Ecology, Univ of Delaware, & Affiliate Professor, Dept Horticulture, Oregon State University.  He had professional appointments at Cornell (1968-70), Univ of Maryland (1970-81) and U Delaware 1981-2009, serving as entomology chair at the last 2.  A sabbatical year was spent at the USDA Tucson lab 1977-78 and he had 2 Fulbright awards for projects in Panama and Bolivia with Africanized bees. Following retirement from Univ of Delaware in 2009 he moved to Portland, OR to be closer to grandkids.

Dewey has been active with Eastern Apicultural Society, serving in many positions, including President and Chairman of the Board and Master Beekeeper Program developer and advisor.  Since being in the west, he has served as organizer of the Western Apicultural (WAS) Society annual meeting and President of WAS in Salem OR in 2010, and is currently member-at-large to the WAS Board.  Dewey represents WAS on the Honey Bee Health Coalition.

In retirement he remains active in bee education, writing for newsletters, giving Bee Short Courses, assisting in several Master beekeeper programs, and giving presentations to local, state and regional bee clubs.  He is author of Honey Bee Biology & Beekeeping, a major textbook used in university and bee association bee courses.  He has a new bee book, The Complete Bee Handbook published by Rockridge Press in 2020.  Each April he does Pacific Northwest bee survey of losses and management and a pollination economics survey of PNW beekeepers.

Dr. Dewey Caron is  Emeritus Professor of Entomology & Wildlife Ecology, Univ of Delaware, & Affiliate Professor, Dept Horticulture, Oregon State University.  He had professional appointments at Cornell (1968-70), Univ of Maryland (1970-81) and U Delaware 1981-2009, serving as entomology chair at the last 2.  A sabbatical year was spent at the USDA Tucson lab 1977-78 and he had 2 Fulbright awards for projects in Panama and Bolivia with Africanized bees. Following retirement from Univ of Delaware in 2009 he moved to Portland, OR to be closer to grandkids.
Zoom details:

The meeting will be held ONLY via zoom.

AABA January Meeting will be held on Tuesday Jan 18. 
Our Invited speaker will be Pam Hepp on the basics of nutrition for all living things and how it applies directly to honey bees.

6:30 Q&A open discussion with President Ryan Smith
Bring your questions

7:00 Bee Nutrition – Pam Hepp

7:30  We will look at a few frames and discuss what we see.  A great exercise in to hear the “thinking out loud” from other beekeepers as they view frams.