VOL 23 #_4_

April Report

Its cold, raining by the buckets full, cold, but still 52 showed for our last meeting.  Thanks to all who made the effort. 

Our program this month is Mr. Paul Jackson, from Texas A&M . Paul is the Texas Apiarist charged with making sure beekeepers follow good healthy guidelines.  Now is the time for you to find answers to all of your questions. Whether it is registering your bees or moving your bees.  Questions about honey or bees.

If your haven’t inspected your bees to find out if you need supers or not you may be too late.  Several swarms have been reported and form accounts I am getting they are very large.  Large swarms come from large cavities which are generally not found in trees but in the walls of homes.  OR your bee hives. There several swarms traps on the market, but you also set up a hives to serve that purpose. If you have a weak hive do you know the best thing to do at this time of year?   Find the answer on April 3.

Dr Larry Conner is coming to Texas on April 12th and give a Queen raising course at the Collin County Club to all interested persons. The charge is $50.00 for the all day course.  Call me for more information.  Dr Conner is also the writer that did such a great job with his interview with John Knight, which got John’s picture on the cover of the American Bee Journal.  Which also brought much attention to our club.  Thousands of beekeepers now know that there is a East Texas Beekeepers Club.  Our THANKS to Dr. Conner for a job well done.

April is our annual ELECTION month and a slate of officers have been proposed.  BUT the floor will be open for nominations, come and participate, be a part of our club. 

If you haven’t considered doing pollination for our local growers you should consider it.  I have many call this year from blueberry growers looking for bees.  The last I heard of was $50.00 a hive rental fee.  Is it all gravy, no not by a long shot, you have to move them, worry about your bees being sprayed, stolen, or just the honey supers being stolen.  Also the best I can find out you can only expect a good honey crop about every third year.   Still if you can moved 10 hives on blueberries for 6-8 weeks that’s $500.00.

Bees, package, nucs are all in short supply or very expensive.  If you haven’t got your order by now you may not find any bees.

APRIL IS

ELECTION MONTH

PLEASE COME

AND VOTE

Well Folks, Here it is, the flowers are blooming and the queens are doing their thing, laying by the frame full. Its looking like this could be the making   of a good season this year. I have been trying my hand at doing some hive management this year with some splitting some hives, trying to make some new queens. I'll give an update @ the meeting on the 3rd.  Lets hope that y'all have been able to check your hives to see how they are doing as it is time to add supers etc.  It always is amazing to me to see the wonders that are going on inside the world of honeybees. When you get the opportunity to look in the hives month by month ,during the winter and then into the spring, when they start bringing in pollen, then the queen goes to work and the nectar begins to be brought in. It is just so cool to observe such a phenomenon as a colony of bees going through the various cycles and stages of development. Life is just so bumped up these days there seems to be less time to stop and enjoy the goings on of the honeybee  We had a neat presentation on the communication of the honeybee by Mr. Barnett last month.

To see the way they (waggle), the speed and direction of the bee to give distance and direction just confirms to me more what a wonderful creator He is. It took a lot of time and effort to produce such an in depth study on the subject and he did a fine job with it.  Thank you very much.   We will be choosing our new officers this month and we need to take time to thank all those who voluntarily contribute to benefit us all. There are so many who give and without y’all this Assoc. would be an empty shell. Kinda like what the Bible calls  clouds and wind without rain. Did you happen to see the world famous beekeeper that just happens to be part of the ETBA!!? Well if you get the American Bee Journal this month you will see our own Mr. Knight on the front cover, and this publication does go around the world. Congrats Mr. J.W. Looking forward to seeing all of you again, so till then bye.

Joe Moench

Mary Jo Brantley submitted the following recipe by popular request.

So, it’s April already.  April to me means: showers, flowers, warmer days (hopefully) and allergies, ( so we have to take the good with the bad).  Getting away from all the heavy winter foods and eating more green stuff,  My family has always been good eaters, with three boys and of course Stanford, I always cooked larger amounts than my Mother, she 1 boy and 2 girls and my father, but I was not as good as she was.  She always said, “if you want to be a good cook, you can’t skimp on quality ingredients”.  This recipe I am going to give you is full of those.  Several of you ladies said they still use this recipe that Dick printed in 2002 but one said the lost hers so here it is again.

2 cups brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

3/4 cup honey

1/2 cup real butter

1/2 cup margarine

4 large eggs, beaten

2 tsp vanilla

4-1/4 cup flour

2-1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1  tbsp cinnamon 

2 cups quick cooking oatmeal

4 cups cornflake cereal (measure then crush fine)

1 cup pecans (chop and the measure)

1 cup raisins — omit these and 24 oz. chocolate chips

Cream together with mixer, sugars, honey, butter, margarine, eggs and vanilla.  Sift all dry ingredients together and add to wet ingredients.  I pour all this into a very large bowl or dishpan and stir in, by hand, the oats, cereal, pecans and either raisins or chocolate chips.  Sometimes I decrease the chips to 2 cups and use raisins also.  Drop by tablespoons onto greased cookie sheets .  Bake for 8-10 minutes @ 325.  Watch carefully because honey makes baked goods brown quicker.  Cool on racks and dust with confectioner sugar.  Store in air tight container, for the trip to the club.  Makes 8 to 10  dozen cookies.  The cookies were named “dishpan” because they make so many they need to be mixed in a dishpan.

Mary Jo Brantley.

Thanks Mary Jo for the above and thanks for all you do for our club.

Honey production in 2007 was down 4% from 2006 @148 million pounds.  Honey price was 103.2 cents down from 103,6 in 2006.  Texas had 82,000 colonies that produced 5,740,000 pounds.  Some Texas honey I am sure sold for $1.03 per pound.  Small producers of true local honey can expect $3.50 to $5.00 a pound.  Don’t cheat yourself.