Central Beekeepers Alliance : Central Beekeepers Christmas Dinner 2011

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Central Beekeepers Christmas Dinner 2011 Posted: 15 Oct 2011 10:40 AM PDT Put it on your calendar — the Central Beekeepers Alliance members and guests will gather to enjoy a festive turkey dinner on the evening of Saturday, 17 December, 2011. Central Beekeepers Alliance – Christmas Dinner Saturday, 17 December 2010 Time: 6:30 p.m. Location: Frank’s Finer Diner, Two Nations Crossing, Fredericton, NB Turkey dinner buffet, with dessert and coffee/tea included. Cost per person: $16.95 (plus tax & gratuity). Payments can be made the November meeting of the Central Beekeepers Alliance, or you can pay on the night. A private room (the downstairs conference room) has been reserved for our event. And if last year’s dinner is anything to go by, you can expect that our President will have rounded up a lot of fun door prizes to add a little more festive cheer to the occasion!

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Central Beekeepers Alliance : Central Beekeepers Meet 8 November 2011

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Central Beekeepers Meet 8 November 2011 Posted: 13 Oct 2011 10:44 AM PDT The next regular monthly meeting of the Central Beekeepers Alliance will be held on November 8th, 2011, at the Agricultural Research Centre on the Lincoln Road in Fredericton, New Brunswick. If you’re just getting started in beekeeping, this meeting will give you the opportunity to get together with some experienced beekeepers to ask questions. And if you’re thinking about getting into beekeeping next spring, you can find out what you’ll need to do now and over the winter months, to prepare to keep your own honey bees! Tuesday, 8 November 2011 Central Beekeepers Alliance Meeting Agricultural Research Centre, Fredericton, NB 7:30 p.m. New beekeepers and anyone interested in starting to keep bees are welcome to come out and join us, to learn more about beekeeping, chat with other local beekeepers, and find out more about how to keep honeybees here in New Brunswick.

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Central Beekeepers Alliance : The Perfect Design of Honey Bees

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The Perfect Design of Honey Bees Posted: 06 Oct 2011 10:02 PM PDT This video is a segment of “Silence of the Bees,” a remarkable documentary mini-series that premiered on PBS in October 2007, when the apiculture community was just beginning to suspect the devastating effects that Colony Collapse Disorder would have on honeybee populations. As the video explains, and as beekeepers know by their own observations, bees are “just this magnificent little engineered thing, just perfect for all the things they can do”: An architectural marvel, the honeybee’s design is an elegant fusion of form and function. A proboscis for ferreting out nectar stored deep in a flower’s folds. And powerful mandibles for eating, feeding young, and manipulating wax. Photo: Bee on lavendar via Flickr Two compound eyes are comprised of 6,900 lenses and covered with sensory hairs for detecting wind speed. Three additional eyes, called ocelli, receive light signals for orientation. Four wings clasp together with tiny hooks and beat up to 230 times a second. For defense, a double-edged, serrated sting, which she can use only once — at the cost of her own life. Hind legs are broadened into special baskets for carrying heavy cargo of pollen to the hive. Feathery hairs coat the body and build up a static charge as the bee flies. When the bee lands on a flower, pollen literally jumps on to her body. Nature’s award-winning Silence of the Bees was narrated by American actor F. Murray Abraham, winner of the 1985 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. It was produced by filmmaker Doug Schultz — and if you’re interested in what went on “behind the scenes” in making the documentary, you can read an interview with Doug Schultz at the PBS program website. Silence of the Bees is available on DVD (packaged together with an equally interesting documentary, Parrots in the Land of Oz). You can get it direct from PBS online or from Amazon.com in the United States and from Amazon.ca in Canada.

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Central Beekeepers Alliance : Central Beekeepers Meet 11 October 2011

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Central Beekeepers Meet 11 October 2011 Posted: 03 Oct 2011 01:48 PM PDT The next regular monthly meeting of the Central Beekeepers Alliance will be held on October 11th, 2011, at the Agricultural Research Centre on the Lincoln Road in Fredericton, New Brunswick. If you’re just getting started in beekeeping, this meeting will give you the opportunity to get together with experienced beekeepers and ask your most pressing questions: how to get your hives ready to go into winter, what to feed and how much, and other seasonal beekeeping topics. And if you’re thinking about getting into beekeeping next spring, you can learn what you’ll need to do now and over the winter months, to prepare to keep your own honey bees! Tuesday, 11 October 2011 Central Beekeepers Alliance Meeting Agricultural Research Centre, Fredericton, NB 7:30 p.m. New beekeepers and anyone interested in starting to keep bees are welcome to come out and join us, to learn more about beekeeping, chat with other local beekeepers, and find out more about how to keep honeybees.

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Central Beekeepers Alliance : So You Want an Observation Hive?

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So You Want an Observation Hive? Posted: 23 Sep 2011 08:07 PM PDT Constructing an Observation Bee Hive is written by Malcom T. Sanford, Professor Emeritus, University of Florida. It includes simple plans for building an observation hive, and tips on maintaining a hive if you plan to keep bees in it for longer terms, rather than simply for a display. (You may recognize Dr. Sanford’s name as the entomologist who updated a classic beekeeping book by Richard E. Bonney for the Storey Publishing company’s Down-to-Earth Guides series in Fall, 2010.) Constructing an Observation Bee Hive If for some reason the FullScreen and Download buttons at the top of the embedded document aren’t working for you — those darned computers! — you can download a printable PDF version of this document at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/MG/MG32000.pdf directly. That way, you’ll be able to see the measurements and instructions on the observation hive plans included. Build or Buy an Observation Hive If you’re looking for an alternative style, plans for building a 3-Frame Observation Hive are available free at Bee Source. Also, a fellow on the Beemaster’s International beekeeping forums has posted step-by-step photographs and description of building an observation hive. Long-time Central Beekeeepers’ Alliance member Earl Gilbey has a four-frame observation hive that may interest and inspire you, too — see Inside An Observation Hive to read about it. If you’re not into woodworking, you can still enjoy bee-watching as a hobby. you’ll find a remarkably wide range of observation hives for sale at Draper Bee — some of which are quite showy, more like livingroom furniture! — or visit Dadant to see a nice simple 2-frame observation hive priced at just under $100 US (plus shipping, of course). So You Want an Observation Hive? Article by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. Copyright © 2011 MindsEye Productions and Central Beekeepers Alliance. All rights reserved.

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Central Beekeepers Alliance : Beekeepers are Worried: Dan Rather Reports

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Beekeepers are Worried: Dan Rather Reports Posted: 22 Sep 2011 11:59 AM PDT Unexplained honey bee die-offs in recent years, filed under Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), have been the focus of considerable research but very few solid answers. Now, according to the folks at the investigative news program Dan Rather Reports, the situation is worse than at first thought: “the whole food chain is at risk.” Where is the finger pointing this time? Systemic pesticides, self-regulation by the chemical industry, and a flawed process for testing and registration of products by the EPA… Bee Aware from Greg Stanley on Vimeo. We were researching an update on how honey bees were faring after years of unexplained colony deaths. Beekeepers are now losing an average of 30-50% of their hives each year from all kinds of symptoms. But our investigations found evidence that has led all the way back to the people who regulate our country’s pesticide program at the Environmental Protection Agency… So what’s going on? One of the suspects, according to beekeepers and scientists, is relatively new on the market. Remember these words: systemic pesticides. Systemic pesticides or neonicotinoids (derived from nicotine) are different from other types of pesticides used in agriculture. Neonicotinoids are absorbed by the plants to which they’re applied, making the entire plant toxic to insects. So the honey bees and other pollinators no longer would need to be sprayed directly or come into direct contact with a pesticide, in order to suffer the effects. The nectar and pollen themselves become toxic to honey bees. According to the American news report, US beekeepers are worried for two reasons in particular. For one, the testing for safety is being done by the chemical companies who produce the systemic pesticides being tested, not the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — “it’s like the fox designing the best chicken coop” — and because scientists no longer agree on what the “safe level” is when it comes to long-term impacts of agricultural chemicals on honey bees. Currently there are more than 17,000 pesticide products on the market in the U.S., and scientists say there is much that remains unknown about their impact on the environment, including the effect of combinations of compounds. While many credit the EPA with doing a good job at making sure pesticides are safer and safer for humans, they have a lot to answer for when it comes to honey bees. Read more: Bee Aware. Dan Rather, Huffington Post. Posted: 9/22/11 12:00 PM ET Bee Aware, September 20, 2011. Dan Rather Reports, HDNet. Beekeepers are Worried: Dan Rather Reports Article by the Central Beekeepers Alliance - Honey Bees & Beekeeping in New Brunswick, Canada. Copyright © 2011 MindsEye Productions and Central Beekeepers Alliance. All rights reserved. Animated Life of Bees What Would Your Garden Look Like Without Bees? How to Keep Bees Like a 5 Year Old Kid

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