Minutes of the Los Angeles County Beekeepers Association
February 3, 2020 General Meeting – 7pm
Next meeting March 2, 2020 General Meeting – 7pm
Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
3561 Foothill Boulevard La Crescenta, CA 91214 losangelescountybeekeepers.com
Kevin Heydman called the Meeting called to order at 7:04pm
1. Welcome (Kevin)
a. Flag Salute (Kevin Heydman)
b. Introduction of the Board (Kevin Heydman)
Kevin Heydman-- President
Dave Williams--Vice President
Mary Ann Laun--Secretary
Jon Reese--Treasurer
El Rey Ensch–Member at Large
c. Announcements
Raffle tickets – Misty volunteered
New Blue Club t-shirts are available for $15. See Dave Williams.
d. Use Index cards for questions
e. Introductions of new attendees. (Approximately 12)
f. Thanks to Doug Noland for tonight’s treats.
g. Pierco Beekeeping Equipment Plant Tour on Saturday, February 15, 2020 (10am-2pm)
680 Main St, Riverside, CA 92501 https://www.pierco.com/
2. Special presentation:
Scott Jeffreys
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Beekeeping Instructor
Queen Breeder, Worked for Kona Queen Company, Hawaii.
Gave his personal history
Gave a historical perspective from California to Kona, Hawaii
Overview of queen breeding (cloak board method)
1500 cells a day escalated to 3500 cells a day
Went back to Cal Poly SLO in 2000 to teach
Spoke about the Cowen Honey Extractors, swarm capture cardboard boxes; Dolittle method of raising queens, Chinese grafting tool, Chinese chalk for Ants (same product as Raid, Miraculous Insecticidal Chalk (illegal))
Borax soap cuts surface tension of the water.
VP queens bees Scott buys breeder queens from Adam Finkelstein vpqueenbees.com. Open breeding. Pol-line 2.2: Italian
Call Scott to order: Scott’s Bee Rock Honey and Queens http://www.beerockbees.com/, smj6789@gmail.com
1278 9th Street
Los Osos, CA 93402}
805 528-6789
3. Update on Bee Literature (El Rey Ensch) no update tonight.
4. American Beekeeping Federation Conference Report. Keith Roberts and Jeremy.
Keith provided an overview of the ABF conference.
Demonstrated varroa tester (Honey Bee Collector).
Samuel Ramsey, bee researcher, Tropilaelaps mites worse than varroa.
Very inclusive to urban beekeepers
Seminars on value added projects
International in scope.
See Keith’s evening conference notes on Facebook under The Valley Hive
5. Committee reports.
a. Secretary’s report. (Mary Ann Laun) Please contact her as soon as possible about any corrections, additions, etc.
b. Treasurer’s Report (Jon Reese) $6,000 down from last year.
c. Membership report (Cheryl Thiele) Pay your dues and preferred members pay online.
d. Beekeeping 101 at the Valley Hive.
Beekeeping 101: Danny Finkelstein or Cheryl Thiele. Starts February 16, 2020. At the Valley Hive.
e. Education Committee. (Mary Ann Landau)
Mary reported on the bags she found at Michael’s. The plan is to have several bags throughout the county for class presentations.
f. Website report. (Eva Andrews) Eva summarized some of the current articles added to the website (Hives stolen in Sutter County, Bee Lab now at UC Davis.) Her year-end report cited 43.9K unique visits and 94.4K page views. Over 100 countries follow us, listed most visited pages, bee removal pages (17,000 hits).
g. LA County Fair (Cindy Caldera) Cindy mentioned that hours for the Bee Exhibit have been cut. Now will be 4pm to 11 pm. Friday mornings will be reserved for education. Cuts made due to low attendance. Barn shuts down at 10 pm so probably Bee exhibit will be closing at 10 pm.
h. Bill Lewis mentioned that his packages will be available April 18th. https://billsbees.com/
i.. Cal Poly Pomona Beekeeping workshop on April 21st.
