December Meeting and Holiday Celebration
Thursday, December 11th at 7 PM

We look forward to you joining us for our year-ending meeting on December 11. The meeting will be at our regular venue - the meeting room in the Central Skagit Valley Library in Sedro-Woolley.

Here's what's up this month:

• A Beeginners Q&A and Bee Chat beginning at 6:15 PM - We enjoy a pre-meeting get together to share tips and tales with a few refreshments to which everyone is invited.
• Holiday Cookie Exchange and refreshments - Yum.
• Bee talk - Former SVBA President Brad Raspet will share his know-how about creating useful (and saleable) side products of beekeeping. 
• 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.

(Next month's meeting is back at the Burlington Library on January 8th)

Annual Cookie Exchange
Thursday, December 11th at the SVBA Meeting

Ready, set...bake.
 
Unlike the Great British Baking Show, this isn't a contest, and we appreciate everyone's contributions and distinctive holiday treats. So please bring a big bunch of cookies or other favorite festive treats to share as part of the refreshments and as your contribution to the exchange. Then it will be time for sampling, enjoying, and assembling a pile to pack back home for the holidays.

The Other Beekeeping Products
Brad Raspet
Thursday, December 11th at the SVBA Meeting

It's not all about the honey.

Former SVBA President Brad Raspet will join us at the December meeting to share his know-how and show us samples of the side products of beekeeping that he makes.

As he will discuss, there are some tricks to this trade, which includes gathering and refining enough purified wax for many of the products - although some don't use as much as you might think. For example, beeswax represents only a few percent of the oil weight in beeswax soaps. If you use too much in the recipe, the soap can become too hard and create a wild amount of lather. So what do you use for the other 95% or more of the soap contents? Brad will fill us in.

But the genuine and iconic beeswax candles are mostly composed of beeswax. The current retail price for a one pound brick of beeswax suitable for candle making is worth about $20 in the Pacific Northwest, which is enough to make a couple of jar candles. So figuring out how to get enough wax from the decapping stage of your honey harvesting is key if you want to have some to sell, or a bunch to share. 

We are conducting our second annual honey harvest survey to see how the year turned out. This year seemed to have been a good beekeeping season from a weather perspective, although the blackberry blooms came and went pretty quickly. 
 
Last year, we found that the average colony among SVBA beekeepers yielded about 20 pounds per hive, but a few super beekeepers (like past SVBA President Bill Markus) scored 60 pounds or more per hive.
 
You can access the survey by clicking the button below - or come to the December meeting and fill out a form there. We will gather all of the information and report the results in our January newsletter.

Back to Burlington
The January 8th monthly meeting

Our January meeting will be held at our former haunt in the Burlington Library on the 8th of January at our normal time slot, at 805 E. Washington Avenue. We are running into scheduling conflicts in Sedro-Woolley due to their re-allocation of time slots for their own programs, but are working to get a more steady and predictable solution.

The SVBA has two new additions to the list of elected officers and Board of Directors as a result of the elections at last month's meeting. We look forward to the contributions of our new Secretary Nathan Lee, and of Susan DeLawter who has joined our Board. We are also grateful to those who have re-upped or those whose Board terms span into the new year. The full 2026 roster is listed at the end of this newsletter.

Queens: Lean, Mean, Laying Machines
Abigail Chapman's November presentation

The presentation last month by Abigail Chapman was a deep hive dive into the biology of honey bee queens and why their fertility can vary enormously. She sports a newly minted PhD from the University of British Columbia in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the level of research she has accomplished about the health of queens is astounding.

Her research is helping to explain the causes of queens that have low fertility, often leading to the loss of a colony or an attempt to replace a failing queen. Here are a few takeaways that may help you understand and manage your colonies in the future:

• Signs of trouble - A healthy, productive queen can lay 2,000 eggs per day, but there are some tell-tale signs of trouble. Abigail cited poor laying patterns with spotty patterns capped brood and signs of early supersedure in a colony, and the sixth-sense of experienced beekeepers that the brood is insufficient. 
• But signs can be misleading - If there isn't enough food sources for the colony to support a large brood, the queen may reduce the rate that she lays. The queen's not at fault, and replacing her won't fix it. 
• Nutrition - Nutrition seems to be the key factor for turning off and on a queen's egg laying behavior. If the queen is not provided with a plentiful and varied diet by the workers, she will stop laying. For example, prior to swarming, the workers stop feeding the queen so that she is not burdened by large eggs and is capable of flying away. 
• A healthy diet - If the food sources are too limited and inadequately diverse, the queen will be subject to viral infections. When this happens, a queen's energy will be diverted to its immune system, rather than producing and laying eggs. The availability of proteins, largely provided by pollen, seems to be an essential ingredient for a healthy hive (and queen's) diet

Stuck inside the house during these long dark days? Think about how your bees manage this time of year - and they don't even have holiday celebrations to break the routine. Here is a December checklist inspired by Brad Raspet's monthly schedule of activities:

• Treat - If you use an oxalic acid vaporizer, now is a good time for a treatment. Follow the instructions - temperatures should be above 37 degrees, and best if above 50 degrees.
• Monitor - Check hives for damage, keep the entrance unblocked, and fend off any pests.
• Weigh - Check the hive weight to measure honey supplies; some folks use a scale, others just try and heft the hive to get a good sense. In our neck of the woods, healthy colonies will have stored between 50 and 80 pounds of honey in the brood supers to keep them going until spring, but many colonies don't have those reserves. So if they are light, add bee patties or sugar to help them through.
• Stock up - Start thinking about next year, and obtaining the new gear you will need.

Membership in the SVBA
Get with the program...

Annual membership renewals are coming up after the first of the year, and feel free to sign up early. It is also theperfect time for new members to 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
Nathan Lee                    Secretary
Susan DeLawter           Board  susandelawter@sgcglobal.net
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
Steve Cecil                    Newsletter and website cecilbees121@gmail.com
Matt and Nikki Jones   SVBA Equipment Managers  lamesican@gmail.com