Officers Present: Steve & Donna Victors Tom Elliott Ty Tobias Meeting Monday, July 28 th, 2014 By: Donna Victors Steve called meeting to order at 6:48 due to traffic from Anchorage being backed up. Treasurer s Report: Treasury report $6504.34 Several Bills: $123.33 for extractor parts, $7.21 for printing of Fair exhibit materials, and two bills for refreshments totaling $27.71. Norm Trudell moved to pay the bills and Tom Elliott seconded. The motion passed. Correspondence: We had one piece of correspondence relating to a bee presentation: On 07/06/2014 11:46 PM, Ella Embree wrote: Hello, I am putting together a botany intensive class for a group of homeschoolers. I was wondering if anyone would be willing to do an educational talk/lesson about pollination (bees)!!! The majority of the group lives in Palmer, but is willing to drive wherever! The intensive class is from August 19-August 29. Please look at your schedule and let me know how to fit you in. Plan to talk to mostly upper elementary students, about 10-20. The students would of studied some about Pollination, but the talk could be 30-45 min. We are flexible on the time of day but we are looking at Friday 22 nd, Monday the 25 th, or Tuesday the 26th. Thanks in advance. Ella Embree please email or text/call me 707-3505 Ella's Blog: www.ellaembree.blogspot.com NEW PHONE NUMBER::: 907-707-3505 720 Coville Circle Palmer, AK 996 Old Business: There was no old business. New Business: Demo booth and sales booth. Don Cowen is in charge of the bee demonstration booth; this is the exhibit in the barn next to the petting zoo. She has three and a half hour shifts available with two people per shift. Each shift gets a parking pass and an entry pass into the fair. The club has display items. Any beginning beekeeper has more knowledge than the people that come into the booth. The fair begins on August 21 through September 1 st. Honey entries are due on August 19 th, Tuesday, from 2 to 8pm. Honey entries. Check out our new page on the website, www.sababeekeepers.com, regarding how to prepare liquid honey for fair entry. The title is Demo Booth and Exhibits or http://www.sababeekeepers.com/demobooth.html
For each different color of honey, you may have a separate entry. Each SABA membership gets two queen-line jars. The queenline jars are standard for fair entries. The jars have been available at each SABA meeting. Jack Anderson is in charge of the bee co-op in which any SABA member can sell honey and bee products. Jack explained how to prepare the various products. Summary: he said that the most frequent sales are from ball jars of half-pints and pints and honey jars of half-pounds and pounds. He said that odd shapes sell well such as bears and angels. Half gallons and quart jars sell also. The co-op subtracts booth rent from sales and about 80% is returned to each seller. The price for a pound of honey last year was $15/pound. It will probably be more like $17 this year. People discussed prices around the state and that Anchorage was selling honey for $20/pound. There are now three booths at the fair that sell honeys. Business cards are welcome but it is more important to put that information on your product label. The words natural, raw, pure, fireweed are good sellers not organic. The label could have your address, email, and a phone number. Honey is sold by net weight. A pint jar is really 1.5 pounds of honey or 22 to 24 ounces. Soap and lip balms are also welcome if they are made with honey or bee products. Get your honey in before the first weekend as that first weekend usually has the best sales. Chunk honey sells well. Chunk honey is capped comb, selling at $1.5/ounce. Sizes vary from 5 through 8 or 10 ounces is better. Honey sells for $1/ounce. The day before the fair opens parking and entry is free. You may bring your honey to the green barn and you will find the co-op booth or you may drop it off at Jack s place near Merrill field, 1520 Karluk. Call Jack s cell first, 602-7863. Jack works at the fair the week before the fair opens. Tang stated she can take honey for those in the Palmer area. Jack expressed that hand-made works well to sell product. Debris in honey is not a good seller! Sticky jars are also not good. 80% return works out to $12/pound for liquid honey. Sell 12 bottles and you can buy your package of bees next year. Fair entry: Ty explained how to prepare honey for judging. You have to be a SABA member to sell honey at the co-op booth, but you don t have to be a member to submit honey or products for judging. Handouts were passed out. Tips: start early! Cleanliness; don t fry or cook when preparing entries as honey absorbs flavors. Standards require a glass queen-line jar. These jars also make a better display. Clean the jar and dry so that lint isn t left behind. Rinsing with hot water is a good idea. Fill jar to ¼ of an inch from the top or to the bottom thread. Prepare two jars; put Saran Wrap under the lid so that the lid doesn t get honey on it. Keep the jar upright all the time. Packing in a box is useful; in this way, bubbles aren t incorporated into the honey. Wipe off any fingerprints. Filter. Filter. Filter. Put white-paper behind the filled bottle and shine a flashlight through the honey filled jar to check for impurities. The honey is judged on color, taste, and smell. There is a $50 grand prize and $10 for each other ribbon. Adults and children may enter. Steve mentioned that it s worth entering a jar of honey so that your moisture content can be identified. A refractometer is used to measure the moisture level of a drop of honey. Honey must be ripe for long-term storage. A sample was passed around which was 17.5% moisture. Drier honey is best so take the honey so take the honey from the frame that is mostly capped. Honey that is below 20% is not likely to ferment. If the honey is runny, prepare an entry and you ll know what that moisture content is. Don t prep in a steamy kitchen or on a rainy day as honey will absorb the moisture. Use of filters and size filters was discussed. The suggestion was that if you warm the honey and let it sit, the debris and bubbles rise to the surface. 130-140 degrees or less keeps the enzymes alive. At 160 the honey will caramelize. Strainer bags or nylon cloth work well for filtering. Brewing supply places sell filters. If you can blow through the cloth, it will filter well but takes a long time. It takes days for bubbles to rise also. Every time you heat honey, microbubbles form. Call or email Ty if you have any questions. Don t forget to check out the website. Discussion followed about entering a frame. The frame may be deep, shallow, or medium. For frames of honey, the judge is looking for light cappings with few open cells and it should be fully drawn and fairly plump. Pick out the center frames and choose from those. Don t poke the cappings and don t use a frame grip. Clean off any wax or propolis from the frame without damaging any cells. Transport in an empty super with empty frames so it doesn t bang around. Transporting them with every other frame being an empty frame is recommended. Dawn Cowen has frame stands.
Entries of wax or pollen are also accepted. Pollen entries should be in a queen-line jar so that all entries are standardized. The entries could be single pollen source or a multi-floral. The judges are looking for cleanliness, uniform size of pollen, smell and taste, along with moisture content. Too moist and the pollen will ferment or mold. The wax entries may be one pound in any shape. It is judged on aroma, color, and cleanliness. Other categories are chunk honey, creamed honey, and bee art. Basically, anything having to do with bees are accepted into the fair! Small items of business: Ben and Tang Johnson are selling a hot knife for $50. It was used twice. Marvin Moser, off Elmore in Anchorage, at 344-3031 is selling three insulated hives and two copper decorative hive tops. A Year in the Life of an Apiary by Keith Delaplane can be converted into DVDs for $15 by Marvin Moser. Julian Smith moved to pay Dawn Cowen for her fair efforts on the club s behalf. Norm Trudel seconded; the motion passed. Various questions were asked. Pollen hoarding was wondered what to do with frames filled with pollen. The frames are heavily laden with pollen. Some suggestions were to space out for wintering over; otherwise freeze for use with the package in the spring. Michael Mott asked about bringing up speakers. Discussion happened. Part of the money in the treasury is for an observation hive. Ray Reynolds was not present. Bee club swapping letters on the website would work. The club is not interested in the expense of bringing up a speaker. Opportune time to cage queen: discussion on strategies. July 4 th through the 10 th for harvest in early August will ensure you have no brood in harvest. Use of a queen excluder was discussed. A queen excluder just makes a 10 or 20-frame cage. Some people harvest from brood supers also. Dena Tanguay explained how she has prevented her hives from being dessimated by mites. She utilizes three methods of mite reduction. First, she cages her queens for three weeks to reduce mite load. She also uses one half-cup powdered sugar through a small sifter per super along with a screened bottom board. She also puts in a drone frame each month. This spring her wintered over colonies had very little mite load. Hugo showed his queen cage made with two corks and a screen. Sign-up sheet for Bees Wanted or Bees to Give was passed around along with an explanation on how this procedure works. This can be found on the website. Dena talked about outside wintering over in Palmer. She has a shed next to an empty chicken coop that she made completely dark and had insulated walls. She used red lights and a small heater which kept the place warm between 40 and 42 degrees. She did have to feed sugar water in January. She had a small ventilation fan going to prevent moisture accumulation. Steve s conex holds 100 hives for $35 each for the winter. You have to get the bees ready. The target weight is 135 to 140 pounds which includes two deeps, bottom board, inner cover, lid, and bees. Italians need to be heavier as the Carniolans eat less. 10 pounds of weight equals one month of feed. They need to make brood in the fall as those are the bees that are alive in the spring. Extractors may be borrowed by SABA members from the following distributors in your respective area. If you travel to another area outside of your mailing address, your membership may have to be verified first. Anchorage: Kathleen Droege at 350-0815 Shirley Ryan at 345-4266 Eagle River/Chugiak: Preston Johnson at 694-2234 Palmer: Dena Tanguay at 746-0046
Wasilla: Dawn Cowan at 373-5061 Kenai Peninsula: Rick Lantz in Sterling at 262-6330 When you use the extractor, please clean it out for the next user. You may use a mild soap, but it s not really necessary. Use warm water but not really hot water. Hot water just makes the propolis/wax stickier. A pressure washer works really well. Please return the extractor and uncapping fork and equipment PROMPTLY as they are hot items this time of year. Thank you! Also, please realize that the distributor is the caretaker of the club s extractor. He or she is doing this as a favor so you don t have to drive very far. The equipment belongs to all SABA members. If there is an issue with any piece of the equipment, please inform the caretaker of the extractor so that a note may be made or repairs may be made ASAP. About 50 people were in attendance