january the bee linethe bee line january 2020—issue 1 sa ramento area eekeepers asso iation...
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The Bee Line
January 2020—Issue 1
SACRAMENTO AREA BEEKEEPERS ASSOCIATION
WHAT’S INSIDE:
President’s Corner - 3 Recipe of the Month - 3 The Library Corner - 4
Bee Friendly Plants - 4 Calendar of Events - 6
MISSION STATEMENT To promote interest in, and awareness of the
vital importance of the honey bee and bee-
keeping to agriculture, commerce, and the
public at large.
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A S S O C I A T I O N O F F I C E R S
C o n t a c t s
President: Rachel Morrison [email protected]
Vice President: Louis Zurlo [email protected]
Secretary: Ann Burridge [email protected]
Treasurer: Doug Houck [email protected]
Past President: Ernie Buda
Class Coordinator: Dave Watson
Membership: Debbi Gable [email protected]
Education/Community Outreach:
Carole Garrett
Inventory: John Johnson
Library: Doug & Gail Houck
Webmaster: Open
Newsletter: Carole Garrett
THE BEE LINE PAGE 2
CATCH THE BUZZ – NO HONEY BEES, NO BUSINESS
Article from Bee Culture on BeeCulture.com Web source: https://www.beeculture.com/catch-the-buzz-no-honey-bees-no-business/
January 13, 2020 Can You ‘Bee’lieve It? Bees Active Year Round! By: Desiree Bergstrom
Harsh Winters Can Be Detrimental To Bee Colonies Used To Polli-nate. It may “bee” a strange time of year to talk about bees, con-sidering that the hives often seen in seed crop fields have been removed for the winter, but low temperatures and harsh winters make a big impact on honeybee populations in the area.
With an estimated 900 species of bees in Oregon, there are really only three or four that are managed — including two in Central Ore-gon, used for seed crops, the alfalfa leafcutting bee and the honey-bee. “For us at Central Oregon Seed, it is a vital part. If we don’t have honey bees for our pollination service, we don’t have a busi-ness,” said Bruce Martin of Central Oregon Seed Inc., a Madras company.
Alfalfa leafcutter bees
According to Andondy Melathopolus, an associate professor at Or-egon State University specializing in pollinators, of the two bees used for agricultural production in the Central Oregon area, the leafcutting bee has the more typical life cycle and has an easier time surviving the winter. Basically what happens is the bees, which are imported and essentially came to the U.S. along with al-falfa, emerge for about six weeks while the alfalfa is in bloom and pollinate the plants. These bees don’t make honey.
While their nests are in the same area, since they are being man-aged for pollination, the bees don’t live in a colony, and they don’t have a queen bee. Instead, Melathopolus describes it as an apart-ment block of straw-like tunnels where a whole bunch of bees live in the same space but are doing their own thing. They make nests like a cocoon out of pieces of alfalfa leaves in the tunnels, storing food there while they are active in the summer, Melathopolus said.
He said the leafcutting bees do the best job pollinating the alfalfa plants. To do that, the bee has to stick its head down inside of the plant, and then it gets hit on the head with the pollen. The problem with using honey bees is they don’t like to get hit on the head with the pollen, so they start to steal it out of the side but don’t pollinate the plant, Melathopolus said.
After the leafcutters pollinate and store food, they return to their nest and reproduce, Melathopolus said. They make about 12 ba-bies, and then the mature bee dies. The young bees eat the food store the mature bee gathered through the season, and then they go to sleep for six to eight months. So while they live about a full year, the bees are really only fully active for six weeks or so, Mel-athopolus said. When they are dormant in the winter, the nests are generally kept in a controlled area. Continued on page 5
PHOTO COURTESY OF OSU EXTENSION – Honeybees are active year round, but making it through harsh winters can be a struggle. The
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Recipe of the Month NO BAKE CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER ENERGY BITES
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The President’s Corner
by Rachel Morrison
YIELD: Makes 15 servings, each serving is 2 bites INGREDIENTS 1/2 cup - peanuts, finely chopped 1 1/2 cup - old fashioned oats, divided 1/3 cup - flax seeds 1/2 cup - almond flour 3 T - unsweetened cocoa 2 T - peanut butter powder 2/3 cup - mini chocolate chips, divided 1/2 cup - peanut butter 1/3 cup + 1 T - honey 2 T - almond or soy milk DIRECTIONS Line a sheet pan with parchment or wax paper. Place peanuts in a small bowl, set aside. In a food processor, combine 1 cup of the oats, flax seed,
almond flour, cocoa, peanut butter powder and 1/3 cup of the chocolate chips. Pulse several times until it resembles coarse meal. Add the peanut butter, honey and almond milk to the oat mixture and process until the mixture comes together. Transfer the oat mixture to a large bowl and mix in the remaining oats and chocolate chips, your hands work best for this! Scoop out 1” clusters of the mixture and roll into a ball with your hands. Then dip the bites in the finely chopped peanuts. Place each ball on the sheet pan and chill in the refrigerator. When the bites are chilled and set, store in an airtight container for up to a week. Recipe and photo courtesy of the National Honey Board: https://www.honey.com/recipe/no-bake-chocolate-peanut-butter-energy-bites
Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the 2020 SABA Holiday Potluck. Thank
you Debbi Gable for planning and organizing and Tiffany White for collecting all of the won-
derful raffle prizes. I’m looking forward to a wonderful 2020 with SABA ! I thought I would do
something a bit different this month and share some of my favorite bee or beekeeping relat-
ed resources. I find myself spending the winter months reading up about bees for both in-
structional purposes and to learn more about bees, honey, the history of beekeeping, vari-
ous beekeeping philosophies and how beekeepers in other areas tend their hives. Here are
a few of my favorite websites/blogs that I enjoy:
Pollinator Partnership: https://www.pollinator.org/
Bee Informed Partnership: https://beeinformed.org/
Foxhound Beekeeping Company. My first beekeeping mentors!
https://www.foxhoundbeecompany.com/beekeepingblog
Beekeeping Like a Girl: A Natural Beekeeping Blog: http://beekeepinglikeagirl.com/
Scientific Beekeeping: http://scientificbeekeeping.com/
Honey Bee Health Coalition: https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/
The Bee Girl Organization: https://www.beegirl.org/blog
Cooperative Extension Bee Health: https://bee-health.extension.org/
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THE BEE LINE PAGE 4
Hedgerow Bee Plants of the Month January 2020 - By Alice Ford-Sala
Native Bee bulb
Single Leaf Onion
Allium unifolium
Family: Liliaceae
You may recognize the family name as belonging to our edible allium family, which includes onion, garlic, leeks etc. Indeed, you could eat the tiny bulbs and greens which have a garlic flavor. But why not plant a swath of A. unifolium for the delightful tiny rose pink clusters of flowers that appear in late spring to early summer? The flower stalks are 1-2 feet tall. A.unifolium is adaptable to a many soil types, isn’t fussy about water – from no summer irrigation to tolerating regular watering. Sun or par-tial shade are fine, deer and rodents tend to avoid them.
They do particularly well with other natives such as buckwheats, sages, native grasses, and other native bulbs. Just give them plenty of room when you plant them, as they tend to multiply. They will even self-sow, remove the seed heads if you don’t want volunteers. Or dig them up every few years and share with friends or move them to other garden spots.
Don’t stop with A. unifolium, there are 50 California native alliums!
Photo by Toedrifter courtesy of Wikimedia https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commo
ns/thumb/6/61/Alliumunifoliumbloom.jpg/512
px-Alliumunifoliumbloom.jpg
IT’S SWARM SEASON! SABA members will receive an email in early February with instructions to have names and contact information added to the 2020 Swarm List on the SABA website. The SABA swarm list is a great way that we fulfill our mission of promoting interest in and awareness of the vital importance of the honey bee and bee-keeping. It also helps rescue swarms and avoid bees being sprayed by pesticides or being viewed as a nuisance.
SABA beekeepers included on the swarm list are encouraged to collect swarms free of charge as a service to the community or ask that donations be directed to SABA to be used in furtherance of our mis-sion. A handout for donations will be provided at the February SABA meeting and added to the website. The swarm list sign-up email will include directions regarding requesting removal from the swarm list and information about the rotation of order of names.
All beekeepers on the SABA swarm list must be: 1) active SABA member in good standing 2) 2019 Volunteer Engagement Survey completed 3) Megan’s Law Sex Offender Registry Survey or Form completed
The February SABA meeting will focus on helping SABA members of all bee-keeping experience levels interact with swarm callers with some suggested questions you should ask, how to communicate what to do if you are not availa-ble to collect the swarm and suggested safe swarm capture practices. Please plan to be in attendance if you would like to be added to the 2020 SABA Swarm List.
Here are the steps you should take to make sure you are ready to join the swarm list in February:
Are you an active member of SABA? Become a member or renew here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0e4cabaf2ba6f94-2020
Complete the the SABA 2019 Volunteer Engagement Survey. Log your 2019 hours here: https://forms.gle/xvsJ8GQ4BRtQQjC6A
Completed the Megan’s Law form? This must be completed each year. Link here: https://forms.gle/YyzuaSox9P5BqC518
The Library Corner
Articles of Interest January 2020
How flowers adapt to their pollinators
Invest in pollinator monitoring for
long-term gain
Wild Pollinators Get the Job Done
Life Through A Bee's Eyes: New Soft-
ware Replicates Animal Vision
BIP Tech Team Field Agents as
Early Alarm Systems
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THE BEE LINE PAGE 5
Honeybees
While the leafcutting bees may have the more typical life cycle, they are not in the majority when it comes to the bulk of pollinators for seed crops in the region.
Alfalfa seed only accounts for a portion of seed crop production in Central Oregon, and the bulk of seed crops, specifically “all that carrot seed,” said Melathopolus, rely on the honeybee to pollinate.
That is where winters get tricky. Unlike the leafcutters, the honeybees are active all year — they don’t go to sleep in the winter.
Here’s how it works.
Within a hive of honeybees, the typical large wooden box hives you see in the middle of fields around here as you drive by in the summers, is a queen bee and thousands of worker bees.
Melathopolus said when it gets cold like it has been the last few weeks, the bees congregate into a tight huddle inside the hive, where the queen is in the middle and able to move about, but the outer layer of bees in the huddle acts similarly to feathers on a bird. It protects the inner part of the group and traps heat, with very little room between them.
It’s during this time that the bees live off of the honey they produce all summer long.
“The only reason they make honey is so they can get through the winter,”Melatopolus said. It takes energy for the bees to form the huddle, and they have to get that from somewhere. It is similar to a person who grows food in their garden, harvests it and preserves it for the winter — the honey is the bees’ preserves.
“All summer long they are canning,” said Melathopolus, chuckling. The bees spend their time and energy trying to stay warm through the winter, but he said winter is a vulnerable time for honeybees, and it can be tough on beekeepers.
Basically, the beekeepers are playing a waiting game until January or February to see how many colonies make it through the winter, he said.
About two years ago it was a pretty heavy loss, and growers were concerned about having enough bees for pollination, Melathopolus said.
It takes a lot of bees to get all of the seed crops in the area pollinated. According to Martin from Central Oregon Seed, about 15,000 hives are brought into the area just for the crops under contract with them.”
No Honeybees, No Business
The main seed crop in the area is hybrid carrot seed, which is grown by planting rows of male plants, which have pollen, next to rows of female plants, which don’t. The bees pollinate the originally sterile plants from the male plants, and then when it comes time for harvest, only the female plants are harvested from.
Martin said that the company wouldn’t even get 25% of crop yield without this hybrid method, not to mention the better quality of the end product. He said hybrid seed creates a better tasting, more consistent carrot when it is planted later. The essential piece of the puzzle to get that better end product is the bees.
They bring the hives in late June, said Martin, and place them in predetermined places for best pollination. The hives are present for about four to six weeks, and then they arrange to get them off the fields as soon as they can.
Keeping the bees
Though the hives come off the fields when they are no longer needed and don’t return until the following year, the beekeeper is tasked with keeping the honeybees alive through the winter. “Oregon keepers are some of the best keepers in the world,” said Melathopolus, adding that 80% of their income comes from pollination.
“What is important is making sure their colonies are good, strong and ready for pollination,” he said. “If we have a bad winter, it can throw a lot of things off kilter for a lot of different crops in the state.”
Because the winter is a crucial time for honeybees, the industry is looking for new ways of wintering bees and keeping colony loss rates at a minimum.
“Some of the bees that are coming to Madras … beekeepers are starting to winter them in potato sheds in Idaho,”Melathopolus said, mentioning it’s a pretty new thing, but it “might help in the future in kind of stabilizing those winter losses.”
Meeting Minutes
There was no meeting in the month of December.
Photo by Carole Garrett
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C A L E N D A R O F E V E N T S
SABA Meetings
Tuesday, January 7, 2020—7:00pm—9:00pm: 2020 SABA Plans. *DATE CHANGE*
Come learn about and give your input for 2020 SABA goals.
Tuesday, February 18, 2020—7:00pm—9:00pm: Swarm Education and SABA Swarm List 2020
Learn about safe swarm rescue & qualifications for SABA Swarm List.
SABA Classes
Link to information & Registration
Beginner Beekeeping Series—Register for the entire series or individual 1/2 day classes *
Sunday, January 19, 2020—9:00am—1:00pm: Overview of Beginner Beekeeping Series and
Getting Ready for Bees*
Monday, March 9, 2020—5:30pm-7:30pm—Native Bees & Other Pollinators
Sunday, March 29, 2020—9:00am—1:00pm: Managing the Colony*
Sunday, March 15, 2020—9:00am—4:00pm: Beginner Beekeeping Class, Instructor: Bernardo Niño
Sunday, May 3, 2020—9:00am—4:00pm: Advanced Beekeeping Class, Instructor: Randy Oliver
Saturday, June 20, 2020—9:00am—1:00pm: Troubleshooting & Summer Beekeeping*
Saturday, August 22, 2020—9:00am—1:00pm: Honey, Products of the Hive, Preparing for Winter*
Other Classes & Upcoming Events
E.L. Niño Bee Lab Classes
Link to Information & Registration
April 4, 2020—9:00am—4:30pm: Planning Ahead for Your First Hives
April 5, 2020—9:00am—4:30pm: Working Your Colonies
Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven Classes and Events
Link to Information & Registration
April 4, 2020—Biodiversity Museum Day
March 21, 2020—10:00am—1:00pm: Spring Open House
April 25, 2020—Planting the Bee Garden Class & Bee Watching for Beginner Class
Events—Volunteers Needed
March 7, 2020 - Green Acres—Dig Into Spring Ideas Fair
March 20, 2020—Sacramento Farm Day
May 2, 2020—California Honey Festival
May 20—25, 2020 - Sacramento County Fair
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Thank you! A sincere thank-you goes out to all of the SABA volunteers who worked so hard last month to fulfill our mission. No job is too small to be sin-
cerely appreciated!
THE BEE LINE PAGE 7
S A C R A M E N T O A R E A B E E K E E P E R S A S S O C I A T I O N P . O . B O X 1 8 8 8 5 1 S A C R A M E N T O , C A 9 5 8 1 8
Website: www.sacbeekeepers.org E-mail: [email protected] Membership: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0e4cabaf2ba6f94-2018 Beekeeping Classes: http://www.sacbeekeepers.org/classes.html
Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/365785396939251/ Newsletter Editor: [email protected]
Did you know?
The antibacterial components of
honey include: Osmolarity, which can
dehydrate bacteria and fungi;
Acidity, pH of about 4, which inhibits
bacteria growth; Hydrogen Peroxide
Production when in contact with
human skin; and Floral Nectar
Components, which vary with the
honey source.
Source: Honey, the Gourmet Medicine,
by Joe Traynor
Do you have a SABA member Shout Out?
Email us to have it featured here.
Photo by Carole Garrett
The Sacramento Area Beekeeper's Association is a local nonprofit organization that was formed
to promote interest in, and awareness of, the vital importance of the honeybee and beekeep-ing to agriculture, commerce, and the public at
large.
SABA meets on the third Tuesday of each month at 7PM to 9 PM at UC/ Sacramento Cooperative
Extension Building at, 4145 Branch Center Road, Sacramento. Meetings normally consists of a
program/guest speaker; short break, snacks and socializing followed by a brief business meeting.
Membership is $25 per year*. A family at the same address may join as a unit, but is entitled
to only one vote regarding SABA business.
Membership Includes: Monthly Meetings, Socializing, Training Classes - low cost and
occasionally free, Programs, Library, Swarm List and Monthly Newsletter.
It’s Membership Renewal Time!