Hives for Heroes
Tom Schultz, VP of ESHPA, did a presentation for Hives for Heroes at our usual place for our September meeting.
Getting Ready for the Fair!
We’re preparing the observation hive for the Erie County Fair.
Thank You Floyd Wigler Grant – Published Article
Dear David and everyone at the Western New York Honey Producers,
A couple of years ago, we received support from the Floyd Wigler Grant. We have published the project’s results! We wanted to thank you for your support. Your encouragement and financial support meant a lot to us. We hope this project will have a good impact on beekeeping in North America.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frbee.2024.1355401/full
Best,
Nuria + Team
Nuria Morfin, PhD
Program Lead
Inspecting and Bee Vacuums
The May meeting brought us back to the club apiary for a two-part meeting.
Starting inside, Carl Smith showed a low cost, easy to make, bee vacuum he made. It used a “big box store” bucket-head type shop vac and a modified 5-gallon bucket. Discussions of other designs led Gary Green to bring in his more traditional “box” type design.
Our local NYS Apiary Inspector, Scott Donnelly, spoke about how he approaches NYS inspections with a focus on diseases (especially AFB). Suspected colonies are field tested and if positive, samples are sent to a lab for further confirmation before any remedial action is taken.
Moving outside to the hives, Scott inspected some of our hives and demonstrated a mite wash (zero mites !). With charged Queen cells and a well packed stack of boxes in one colony, Doug Ford demonstrated splitting a colony.
Thanks to Bridget and Carl Smith for their hospitality!
Club Hive Inspection
Where you able to be there? If not, you missed a great time!
A short notice invitation brought 14 members to the club apiary for the initial hive inspection for the year. Doug Ford and Carl Smith lead the group through our four hives. None of the hives were quite ready to be split yet, but everyone had the opportunity to see eggs, larvae, and capped brood and more.
There were plenty of drones and yellow- orange pollen being brought into the hives.
Wax Rendering and Candle Making
Bridget and Carl Smith hosted the February general meeting at their maple farm in Hamburg. After a short introduction, Carl led a hands-on demonstration of rendering wax cappings and frame scrapings. The cold (19 °F) morning sped up the filtered wax solidification.
Then it was back inside to warm up and pour some candles. Discussions of wick sizing and insertion techniques, mold preparation, and wax pour temperatures occurred while the attendees poured candles. This meeting was a great opportunity to explore wax rendering and candle making in a hands-on environment.
This is also the site of the WNYHP Inc. apiary. After the candle-making, some of the attendees visited the five club hives. The cold temperatures of course limited the visit to external viewing only.
Thank you, Carl and Bridget, for your hospitality!
Harvest Time
During a recent apiary “work” session, about 20 frames of honey was harvested from our growing (now 5 hives!) club apiary. Four members met at Carl Smith’s Maple Farm and extracted about 5 gallons of honey from the combination of deep and medium frames harvested earlier. Thank you, Carl, for your hospitality and the extraction equipment loan! What’s better than five gallons of honey? Two-and-one-half hours of sharing and comparing of different extracting equipment and techniques as well as all the normal beekeeping banter. We all left with new ideas, techniques, and tools we want to try in the future.
If you enjoy beekeeping and talking about beekeeping, the club apiary sessions are great social and educational opportunities.
Open Hive Visit hosted at Smith Maple Farm
A visit to a local apiary offers a hands-on experience of working with bees during the final class of our six-session Beginner Beekeeping Class.
April 24th, 2021 Native Plant Walk
This moderate hike took us through a number of habitats where we discussed and studied where possible, plant species native to the Western New York region We’ll explore the value these plants contribute to their ecosystems, including how they interact with other species, such as insects, birds, and mammals. Because of COVID there was a Maximum of 25 people. Walk Presentation by Maryjo Graham. Oakmoss Education was founded by Mary Jo Graham, who has had a fascination with our natural world since her teen years. Mary Jo graduated Summa Cum-laude from the University at Buffalo with a degree in Environmental Studies focusing on education and Native American culture. She has worked as a Naturalist for well-respected environmental education and community organizations, developing programs and teaching at schools as well as to the general public. Additionally, she is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Erie Community College teaching courses in the Environmental Science program and co-managing the establishment of natural regeneration areas at South Campus.
In 2020, Mary Jo received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching for her work at SUNY Erie. For more information, see
http://oakmossed.com.
April 10th, 2021 General Meeting
I like to thank the members that participated in our Zoom meeting today. We had 17 members attend. At the meeting we had the following speaker:
Mary Jo Graham – Topic: Native Plant Hives – http://oakmossed.com
Oakmoss Education was founded by Mary Jo Graham, who has had a fascination with our natural world since her teen years. Mary Jo graduated Summa Cum-laude from the University at Buffalo with a degree in Environmental Studies focusing on education and Native American culture. She has worked as a Naturalist for well-respected environmental education and community organizations, developing programs and teaching at schools as well as to the general public. Additionally, she is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Erie Community College teaching courses in the Environmental Science program and co-managing the establishment of natural regeneration areas at South Campus.
In 2020, Mary Jo received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching for her work at SUNY Erie. For more information, see
http://oakmossed.com.
Mary Jo gave a wonderfully delightful presentation on Native Plants. Members who couldn’t make the live presentation can request the link to the video by sending the request to president@wnyhpa.org Your membership will be verified prior to sending the video link.