Wilson County Beekeepers

Wilson County Beekeepers met Monday, July 6, 2015 at the Ward Ag Center with 69 members and guests in attendance. Carey Mitchell, President called the meeting to order

Minutes of the May and June meetings were approved.

Old Business Discussed:

• T-shirts and hats are in…also have new visors. A few extra shirts were available that were not pre-ordered
• The June 15^th Extracting Workshop had 25 attendees
• Peggy Robinson delivered the ‘Natural Beekeeping’ video to the Lebanon Public Library in memory of James and sent a nice card of thanks
• We collected items for New Leash on Life at the picnic along with $673.00 in monetary donations. We received a thank you note from the office, and also one from the Director, Angela Chapman, who was at the picnic
• We received Pollinator Seed packets from Bayer that were handed out at the picnic…if you didn’t attend and want to pick up a packet or two, they are on the back table.
• New Beekeeper Scholarship awards were handed out to Philip Chapman and Sally Syes at the picnic…Jessica Dodds and Mark Goodrich received theirs this evening along with the $250.00 scholarship check.

New Business Discussed:

• Wilson County Fair—August 14-22 with entry date for the Honey Show being August 13 from 3:00 – 6:30
• Fair schedule was available for anyone wanting to work a shift or three
• Bears available for honey donations…help where you can
• Need 10 frames of honey (do not need to be completely filled) for extracting demonstrations on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights
• Accepting donations of items for the baskets we will be raffling off at the Fair. Would like to include jarred honey and other hive products.
• A reminder to grant winners…don’t forget to pay back honey owed association (those that received hive grants are asked for half of their honey crop and scholarship winners are asked for 2 gallons)
• TBA is offering three one-day Conference scholarships for this year (as we have three delegates). This is for new TBA members. The question brought to the floor was how many scholarships will WCBA be giving this year for first-time Conference attendees? Margaret Cantrell brought up the idea of 9 from WCBA giving us a total of 12 scholarships. The membership agreed. If anyone wants to be put on the list for scholarships, please let Petra know.

In Fred’s absence, Karen Dawson presented Fred’s To-Do List:

• Extract within two days after removing supers
• Put extracted supers back on hives
• Do not get greedy extracting…bees need 60 pounds for winter…and that’s per hive not per yard, plus honey has more nutrition than sugar water
• Ventilation
• Make water available and not from your neighbor’s pool
• Donate some honey to the Club for sale at the fair
• Read—-Read—–Read

John Pace, a beekeeper from Kentucky, and a very informative power point on bee pests, including small hive beetles, Varroa mites, Tracheal mites, and others

Announcements:

• Next meeting, Monday, JULY 20—Fair Review. This dates has been changed since the membership book was printed.

With Fred not at the meeting, Carey and Kenny Birdwell handed out this month’s door prizes. . Congrats to this month’s winners: Josh Davis, Tom Theriaque, Norma Underhill, Steve Warren, Mark Linder, Kim Walter, and Wayne Thornton (who was lucky enough to win a live queen provided by John Pace)

Meeting adjourned around 8:35 for refreshments and fellowship.

Respectfully submitted: Petra Mitchell, Secretary/Treasurer—Wilson County Beekeepers Association, July 7, 2015

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