Newsletter for June 2025
 

Join us on Thursday, June 12
Central Skagit Valley Library in Sedro-Woolley

Our next monthly meeting will be on Thursday, June 12th at 7:00 PM. We will be gathering in the meeting room at the Central Skagit Valley Library in Sedro-Woolley.

Here's what's up this month:

• A Beeginners Q&A and Bee Chat beginning at 6:00 PM - We enjoy a pre-meeting time to share tips and tales with a few refreshments to which everyone is invited.
• Bee talk - Our presentation this month will be by Susan DeLawter on preparing your entries to the honey judging event at the Skagit County Fair.
• Zoom option - If you can't come, but want to participate, you can join us by Zoom. An e-mail with the link will be sent to members before the meeting.

The Great Bee Near-Disaster
Area beekeepers to the rescue

There was big news for this little newsletter to cover this month.

A flatbed truck loaded with about 14 million bees overturned in northern Whatcom County on May 30th, as it was being pulled out of ditch by a tow truck. The bee-laden flatbed had just left blueberry fields near the Canadian border where the bees had been pollinating the crop, and the truck began the drive to its next assignment before dawn when things went awry.

The successful response was managed and largely accomplished by a small swarm of local beekeepers. They had texted each other and sped to the site after some initial conversations with the County's incident commander and exchanges with the 911 operator. More than a dozen beekeepers gathered at the site to help.  SVBA Vice President Dawn Beck was one of the first to be contacted  and suited up when she arrived. She and the other beekeepers were able to persuade the Sheriff's Department that spraying foam and killing the bees was neither needed nor advisable, in view of the behaviors and substantial value of the bees. 
 
So we asked Dawn to contribute some observations about the wild events that day, and she gave us some interesting reactions and these photos to share with you.

• Beekeepers to the rescue - The beekeepers took charge of the site, necessarily - the sheriff's staff was bottled up in their cars, unequipped for such a bizarre situation. Luckily, one of the beekeepers knew how to operate a semi-trailer truck, climbed in, and pulled the vehicle back on the road. But the damage was done - every palette and hive was in a broken pile in a deep ditch.
• A roaring cloud of bees - Her first impressions were of a ROARING cloud of bees, unlike any buzzing she had heard before. Bees were hitting her like a hail shower, and stinging her through any area that had only one layer of protection. 

• Duct tape and bee stings - Climbing into her full bee suit, she taped up all of the vulnerable joints with duct tape that she had in her truck, and then shared it with the other responders who were getting stung, too. It was, she said, like a war zone.
• Untangling the mess - The hives had come loose from the palettes, supers were separated from one another, and lots of loose frames were spread about. The pile was so tall and unstable that there was a danger that it would collapse if they pulled the wrong box out, dumping bees on top of their heads. They had to work together. It was like solving a giant Jenga puzzle with much worse potential consequences. Many of the hives were loaded with honey, so pulling a 100-pound hive out of a steep gully was, as she put it, "no joke".

• A massive, short term beeyard - A temporary recovery yard was created in an open field next to the accident scene, and the beekeepers reassembled hives as best they could. Subsequently over the next night and day, the bees found places in hives, and the process of regrouping and recovering as many hives as possible began.

Dawn noted that a large volume of inaccurate information and public misunderstanding of bees was an immediate byproduct of the accident. This is one of the reasons that the typical response to similar incidents often results in the unnecessary panic and subsequent euthanization of the bees. She is considering proposing a program to be sponsored by WASBA to provide on-line information and incident management advice for other communities and agencies to use in the future.

Journeyman Beekeeping Class?
Contact Dawn Beck if you are interested

For those of you thinking about moving up a rung on the beekeeping ladder, you may be interested in the additional training that leads to getting your Journeyman Beekeeper certificate. Dawn Beck is considering setting up a class at this level; if you are interested, send her an e-mail at dawnrunner@live.com

Bees and Brews
Second Monday of each month
This month? June 9th
Terramar Brewstillery in Bow
6 PM to 7 PM

Join us for our monthly informal get together at the Brewstillery, which also hosts the SVBA Apiary. Dawn Beck normally starts a discussion with a new topic and her observations, after which the chatting can take whatever beekeeping twists and turns that the participants want to pursue.

Getting your Entries Ready for the Fair
Presentation by Susan DeLawter
June 12th at the SVBA Meeting

The annual honey judging event at the Skagit County Fair is fun and growing programs, each year drawing more and more participants. It is easy to enter, but there are some rules of thumb that help raise your submittal into the ribbon-winning category.
 
Susan DeLawter is a trained honey judge and has been a very successful exhibitor at other fairs. Susan will fill us in about all of the categories that you can consider, and ways to prepare your entry so that it catches the appreciative eye of the judges.

Hive Sides at the Apiary
Every Saturday
10 AM to Noon at the SVBA Apiary
(in the field behind the Terramar Brewstillery)

During this time of year, we take some time each week to inspect and manage our colonies at the SVBA demonstration apiary. There is no preset topic - the bees set the agenda. You are invited to come watch, learn, and ask questions as each colony evolves over the summer.

The Pollinator Knowledge & Fun Fest
Sponsored by WASBA
Medicine Creek Winery, Olympia
Saturday, June 21

This month features this state-wide event for beekeepers and their families, and is a chance to rub elbows with other beekeepers and vendors. It is organized to offer technical tips and beekeeping information, balanced by some summery fun on the grounds of a winery.  Here is the link for more information: https://wasba.org/events/knowledge-fun-fest/

Annual SVBA Picnic
Sunday, July 13th , Noon
Hillcrest Park, Mount Vernon

This is a potluck summer get together where the SVBA provides provide hamburgers and hotdogs and everyone brings a favorite summer dish to make up an amazing picnic spread. We will be set up at the pavilion near the pickleball courts - please join us! 

Skagit County Fair
August 7-10

Work your vacation plans around these dates, so that you can enjoy and participate in the Fair and our beekeeping booth. You can Participate with your honey entries or volunteer to staff and/or set up an award-winning booth. You even get a  free entry pass if you volunteer.

Set Auction Bid Items Aside
Now

Two of our members were doing spring cleaning and building a pile of good used stuff to donate somewhere. Then the light bulbs lit up and they realized that several of the really cool items would be perfect for next year's annual SVBA silent auction. So set aside a couple of choice items now, and you will be entirely ready when next year's big annual event rolls around.

Presentation: 
Food for thought...

Our guest speaker in May was the devoted researcher Dr. Priya Basu on the topic "Supplemental Feed and Nutritional Management of Colonies". She is new to the beekeeping faculty at WSU and has been focusing on what bees should eat to be healthy. She brought an immense amount of technical information that underlined that the topic is...complicated. Among the takeaways were some indicators of both good and bad bee nutrition.

Good stuff:

• Diverse, staggered and abundant natural sources are best - These are three characteristics of floral sources that will support healthy hives so that you don't need to supplement them when they are available. Two out of three is not good enough.
• Winter patties without pollen are fine - Providing food patties that don't have pollen as a component can be good for the bees, and won't induce early queen laying behavior.

Bad stuff:

• Don't heat that feeding syrup! - If sugar syrup is heated too much, it creates a toxic compound ("HMF"). If you heat up the sugar/water mix to make the sugar dissolve faster, you could be damaging or even killing bees.
• Commercial protein supplements have limited benefits - Commercially available protein supplements are only eaten by a portion of the bees and are not used for the bee bread needed to feed larvae.

Other stuff:

• Honey crystallization is linked to the nectar sources - It turns out that the proportion of glucose to sucrose in the nectar that bees gather is a primary factor in its propensity to crystallize.  Fructose is the more soluble sugar of the two. So the next time your honey starts to crystallize more than you want, feel free to blame the flowers.

It has been a terrific spring for bees, with lots of swarming behavior in our colonies. But now we can turn to the honey-flow period for our robust colonies. Here is what to watch for: 

• Honey super time - Add honey supers for full colonies now.
• Avoid crowding - Check for overcrowding and create more space as needed. You need to have some extra space for brood on both sides of the brood nest, and enough frames to be filled with honey and pollen.
• A second brood box - it is time to add this for the healthy new hives.
• Last chance for splitting - It is near the end of the split season, when both colonies have a good chance of succeeding.
• Wax building - This is the peak period for the bees to create new wax, so get old frames out and keep moving undrawn foundation closer to center so that the bees building more new comb.
• On top of the honey flow - Keep eye on your honey supers - they can fill up fast, and a new honey super should be added when a box is about 3/4 full.
• Added protection - July is yellowjacket season, so if you want to protect colonies with a robbing screen, purchase or build them now.
• Last of the syrup - Continue feeding syrup (1:1 water to cane sugar) for new hives only, and for the last time - they should be on their own very soon.

If you use drone frames as a mite control method, it is time to remove the capped drone brood when it becomes prolific, and put the frames back to get a second round of comb-building and drone brood going.
 

Membership in the SVBA
Get with the program...
 

Annual membership dues are a fantastic deal, and it is the perfect time to renew or join and be part of our beekeeping colony. 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