PSBA Meeting June 24 2014

We hope to see you at May meeting this Tuesday, the 24th!

  • 6:30 Pre Meeting Lesson
  • 7:00 PSBA Announcements
  • 7:30 Main Meeting Presenter: Franclyn Heinecke, MA; Region 2 Representative, WSBA; Member, Statewide Honeybee Working Group; Past Vice President, Pierce County Beekeepers Association; Small-scale beekeeper in Puyallup with interests and focus on the need for season-long forage for bees and raising/evaluating queens for vigor in the Pacific Northwest.Research on honeybee health increasingly elaborates the importance of bees being able to find season-long natural, nutritious pollen and nectar sources.  Unlike sugar and pollen substitutes, natural forage provides specific enzymes that honeybees need to “up-regulate” or strengthen the colony-wide immune response.  Honeybees have fewer individual immunity genes; they have evolved with a colony-level “social immunity” where foraging effects of the colony help to strengthen individual immunity responses.
  • Come hear from Franclyn on this interesting topic of: Plants as Medicine for Honeybees: How can we replace their natural food and medicine that is being taken away?

Some of the most nutritious honeybee food sources in Washington come from plants that have been designated as “noxious weeds” and are being systematically poisoned and eradicated across the state.  The removal has been going on for a long time, is wide spread and expensive, and harmful to the needs of managed and native pollinators.  When important honeybee forage plants are removed, what are possible sources of food replacements that can be replanted to support honeybee health?