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!
