The 2025 WNYHP,Inc summer picnic was held at Chestnut Ridge Park on August 2nd. The perfect weather was surpassed only by the great fellowship and swapping tales of beekeeping woes and successes. Patty and Rachael demonstrated their DIY uncapping tank and Dimeter showed the experimental long frame his is working on to reduce swarming and improve winter survival. Special thanks to Marylou for organizing and grillmaster Ed with an assist by Al.
Meeting on February 8th at Smith Maple Farm
Tom Schultz, VP of ESHPA, did a presentation for Hives for Heroes at our usual place for our September meeting.
We’re preparing the observation hive for the Erie County Fair.
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
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!
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.
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!