Wilson County Beekeepers

Meeting Minutes – 7 July 2014

A small group (65) of Wilson County Beekeeper members attended the July 7, 2014 meeting at the Ward Ag Center.

Membership approved the June minutes that were posted in the last newsletter.

Old Business Discussed:

• Carey thanked everyone for the food that was brought to the picnic
• Items still available for sale:
  • Shirts–$15.00/Hats–$10.00
  • Pollen Substitute–$1.75/pound
  • Beetle Traps–$1.00/Beetle Jails–$1.50
  • 40 lb. buckets of Sugar–$20.00
  • Fair Entry jars—70 cents each

New Business Discussed:

• Carey discussed working the honey booth at the fair, which is a good educational opportunity for new beekeepers. Petra has the fair schedule if you want to sign up
• Plastic 8 ounce honey jars are available for club donations ONLY.
• Need items for the Raffle Baskets—honey, hive products, anything bee related. Please bring them to the next meeting to we can make up the baskets
• We will have a sign-up sheet for the Short Course (October 21-23) at the fair
• New cabinets have been built to display honey exhibits at the fair
• Grant Recipients…remember the club’s portion of honey
• Need 10 frames of honey for extracting demonstrations
• Also will sell one-ounce bars of wax for $1.00 each
• TBA Fall Conference—October 10 & 11—offering 12 scholarships for first-time conference attendees. Register with Petra and we will draw at the September meeting.

Fred’s To-Do List:

• Removing Supers—
  • Extract within 2 days
  • Do not get greedy
  • Put extracted supers on hive

• Ventilation— it is HOT — Make sure water is available (on your property, not your neighbor’s pool)

• Donate some honey for the fair
• READ—READ—READ

Melissa Ross, our honey judge for the fair, had examples of things to do and NOT when preparing your honey and wax for the fair. Questions were asked and answered on various entries. It was noted that entries will be accepted from 3:00 – 6:30 on Thursday, August 14 (the day before the fair opens)

Announcements:

• Next meeting—July 28—Jim Garrison will do a program on Working with Wax…cleaning, molding, candle making
• Margaret Cantrell announced that her church, Hermitage Presbyterian Church will host a craft fair on October 4. If anyone wants to attend to sell honey or products, get in touch with her

With Fred Dawson out for baseball, Carey enlisted Bethany Ross (Melissa’s daughter) to help with door prizes:

• Queen from Hardeman’s was won by Mark Linder
• Vitex won by Sharon Nuss
• Custom Honey Labels from Better Bee won by Jonnie Meador
• Virginia Copperleaf won by David Thompson and Carol Tripp
• Alder Buckthorn won by Mark Goodrich, Debbie Bobbitt and Greg Daniels
• Frame Cleaner won by Dean Nuss
• Bill Quinn got the Honey Dipper
• Paula Rogers donated some candy which was won by Peggy Robinson
• Mark Goodrich re-donated a Hardeman Queen, which was won by Dave Gordon

Carey read a note from New Leash on Life reflecting their appreciation for items and monies donated to them at the picnic.

Meeting adjourned around 8:10 for refreshments and fellowship.

Respectfully submitted: Petra Mitchell, Secretary/Treasurer—Wilson County Beekeepers Association, July 8, 2014

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