Newsletter for March 2025
 

Join Us: Potluck and Silent Auction
Thursday, March 13th
Sedro-Woolley Senior Center 6-8 PM 
Setup early, from 5-6 PM
Auction starts at 6 PM

Our annual potluck dinner and auction event is coming up, an event that is always full of food and friendly bidding. Please bring side dishes or dessert to share, items to auction, a healthy appetite, and a generous budget to spend on the donated items in our silent auction. This event contributes significantly to our budget for speakers and other programs.
 
We will be setting up the display tables beginning at 5 PM. So come a little early to lay out your donated items to contribute to making the evening fun and profitable for the SVBA. An early start will also give you time to layout your dishes and look at assembled items, before the bidding begins. The SVBA will provide the main dishes - rigatoni and lasagna with meat and cheese pasta sauce, and fettuccine with a no-meat alfredo sauce.

Bees and Brews
Second Monday of each month
Beginning March 10th

SVBA President Brett DeLawter alerts everyone that we now have a regular gathering to discuss bees over a beer, from 5 to 6 PM on the second Monday of each month. This takes place at the Terramar Brewstillery in Bow which also hosts SVBA Apiary. Dawn Beck will make sure that there is a topic to talk about, and kick-off the beekeeping chatter. Please join us!

Beginning Beekeeping Course
April 5th and 6th, 8 AM to Noon

Domie Bourgeois reports, "We had a great turnout for last weekend's beekeeping class! If you were interested in attending but couldn't make it, we're offering it again next month on Saturday, 4/5, and Sunday, 4/6, from 8 am to 12 pm via Zoom. 
 
Whether you're interested in getting started with beekeeping or expanding your current beekeeping knowledge, this class is a great investment in your beekeeping journey. Spread out over two, four-hour sessions, the class is packed full of information and invaluable insight from our very own Master Beekeeper, Dawn Beck. It also provides the option for participants to become certified at both WASBA's Beginner and Apprentice levels (for additional fees).
 
The class, itself, costs just $65 per person, and you can register here.  We'd love to get more people signed up, so please help us spread the word by sharing with your networks."

April Presentation and Demonstration
Splitting Colonies
Bee talk: Thursday April 10, SVBA Meeting
Field demonstration: Sunday, April 19, 10 AM, Terramar Apiary

The indefatigable Dawn Beck is going to provide next month's meeting program, going through the ins and outs of colony splits. Timing is important for this one - early spring is when many beekeepers in our region to avoid swarming and multiply their colonies. But it can be tricky to accomplish, and Dawn will guide us on the do's and don'ts.
 
To add practice to the theory, Dawn will also lead a demonstration of colony splitting at the SVBA Apiary behind the Terramar Brewstillery in Bow on Sunday, April 19th at 10 AM. This is a "weather permitting" event, because splitting a hive in the rain isn't a great idea.

A Trifecta Bee Event
Hood River on Saturday, June 7th

Our beekeeping friends to the south are putting on a Trifecta Bee Event in Hood River, Oregon on Saturday, June 7th. they have lined up some great speakers: Dewey Caron PhD, Becky Masterman PhD, and Priyadarshini Chakrabarti Basu PhD. They will have some great food from a local taco palace, so think about making the trip.

Randy Reads Bees
February SVBA meeting program

Randy Oliver joined us online and introduced us to his analytical approach to inspecting colonies. His photos and stories were built around his deep understanding of the life cycle of honeybees and the annual patterns of bee colonies. After showing us what a healthy hive looks like at various points in the year, he then shared clues on how to diagnose real problems that you need to manage.

There were lots of takeaways, including helpful advice for the spring:

• Room to expand - It is important that the queen have good access to empty drawn comb above the brood nest - if she can, she will want to move upwards.
• White wax signal - When you see white wax appearing on top of the frames, it is a sign that they are out of room, so expand their capacity quickly and add some foundation so that they can add more drawn comb to the hive.
• More than a small dab - There should be a good-sized blob of liquid surrounding small larvae - it they are "dry", your bees have an inadequate diet that you may need to supplement.
• Spring weather is critical - If it is persistently cold and raining, the bees simply won't have enough resources to expand their population and be ready for the main honey flows. So keep your fingers crossed this year.

Above all, Randy stressed that we shouldn't fuss with the bees; it is very easy to do more harm than good. The slide says it all...

Every year, we end up having a reserve of harvested honey that crystallizes and is no longer appreciated as gifts. So in our household, this turns into "cooking honey" that makes its way into baked goods and recipes of all sorts. 
 
It's perfect for pies but there is a trick to it. Use low heat to de-crystallize it, and then you can work it into the filling mix. But be careful - honey is sweeter than sugar, so use a proportion of 2/3rds to the measure of sugar that the recipe calls for. But honey is liquid, so also reduce the other liquids in the recipe if it calls for some. Our experience with Skagit Valley apple and pear pies has been excellent.
 
Maybe you should try it, and bring the results to the potluck.

SVBA Picture Library
Help us build a collection

It can be difficult to find good photos of bees and beekeeping that are not both copyrighted and expensive to buy. So we are looking for members to contribute images that can be used for our newsletters, websites, classes and presentations. So we are assembling our own resource library.
 
Pick no more than 5 photos that show interesting stages of beekeeping, and send them (with your name) to your newsletter editor at cecilbees121@gmail.com. We will then assemble them as a library of images that we can all use when we need some, with credits to the photographer.

Wow, we have had some really warm and sunny weather so far. Here is this month's activity checklist drawn from Brad Raspet's schedule of beekeeping practices.

• Weigh - Gently lift hives to check and record their weight to determine if the honey reserves are still significant.
• Feed - Provide or supplement their stores with feed honey (stored capped frames that you didn't extract), bee candy, or raw sugar.
• Check - Look for dead hives and try to determine the cause of their demise.
• Clean - Clean "dead outs", supers, equipment and bee yard areas.
• Replace - If you need to replace or add colonies, order your nucs or packages right away - supplies can be limited.

Annual membership dues are for a calendar year, and it is a good time to join, renew, or rejoin your SVBA membership. Annual dues are only $20 for an individual or $30 for a household. It's a high value investment and supports the wide range of programs and events that we offer.

The membership form and payment instructions are found on our website or by clicking HERE.

The online payment option can be accessed by clicking HERE.

Skagit Valley Beekeepers Association

Brett DeLawter              President  brettdelawter@gmail.com
Dawn Beck                    Vice President   dawnrunner@live.com
Domie Bourgeois         Treasurer/Website Manager domie.bourgeois@gmail.com
Brenda Crossley          Secretary   brendacrossley49@gmail.com
Steve Cecil                    Newsletter  cecilbees121@gmail.com
Don Johnson                Board   homebrewtwo@gmail.com
Jim Kohl                        Board
Heather Oates               Board  hoates@gmail.com
Seth Smith.                   Board   seth_smith@live.com
Chris Zimmerman        Board  gocougs87@gmail.com
Matt and Nikki Jones   SVBA Equipment Managers  lamesican@gmail.com