This is my first article as president of our club and it makes me a little nervous. You see, I have a long history of learning from my mistakes -- as I make a lot of mistakes -- so I hope you bear with me. I would like to start by thanking all of those who served last year as officers of our club. Club members Jeff Beck, Allison Abernathy, Mary Chretien and Jasmin Lizarazo have served for multiple years and have done many great things for our club. I cannot thank them enough as they move on to more adventures in beekeeping. The man known as Bee George (George Meyers, the rat fink who talked me into, or more correctly, twisted my arm into volunteering as the new president) who, in the past two years of being our club president, has put in an incredible amount of work for our club. I, and everyone in our club, wish Bee George all the best in his new endeavors on the eastern shore of Maryland in his new home of Talbot County. Bee George will be around helping with our ListServ and writing articles for the Honey Pot, just because he loves us so much. Thanks, George!!!
To those members that have stayed on the board, Jim King, Kameha Bell and Dave Povtak, a big, big thank you as these are some of the hardest working people I know and I have a great time working with them. To the new members of the board, Tracy Waterman, Leon Vandenberg, Jim Fraiser (prior president), Mary McQueen and Dennis Cain thank you for stepping up and volunteering to work for our club this year. I truly enjoy the enthusiasm that these new beekeepers bring to the Board and our club.
Our club this year will continue with the normal functions that we have done in the past. The major ones are: “The Short Course” in late winter, “The Montgomery County Fair” in August, our monthly Honey Pot publication (thank you, Dara Ballow-Giffen, for being our Editor) and our monthly meetings held on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at Brookside Nature Center. Our club does many other things during the year, too numerous to mention here.
We are going to try something new with our monthly meetings. The time at the beginning of the meeting, 6:45 to 7:15pm, will be set aside for new (or curious) beekeepers to ask questions of more experienced beekeepers. Every month we will have a small group of more experienced beekeepers on hand to answer questions for the new or just curious beekeepers, as we know this is why many people come to the meetings. I will caution those asking the questions that there will be many answers as the old adage is true: “If you ask 10 beekeepers a question, you will get 12 different answers!”.
Now for some of the sad news. As I sit here, it is 7 degrees outside and I can just wonder how my bees are able to deal with this bitter cold. So far this year, I need all of my fingers to count the hives I’ve already lost. If I lose any more, I will need to start counting on my toes. For the first time ever, I did do a soft chemical treatment on my hives for varroa mites. I used HopGuard (a beta acid and food grade product) and I’m still losing hives at a rate like last winter. Many of the other beekeepers that I’ve talked to seem to be seeing the same thing. So if you’re in the same situation that I find myself, please don’t give up on beekeeping. My mother always said that life was never easy and the life of a honey bee is even harder.
Hope to see everyone at the February 12 meeting.
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