With life on “pause” I feel like these past weeks have been lifted from the movie Groundhog Day and I have been forced to examine my habits and do all those things I said I would do but never quite got off my list. Well, I haven’t learned to play the piano, nor have I gotten any better with the French language, even with my daily lesson from Mr. Trudeau. I have, however, organized all my bee frames in date order, colour coded and labelled/stencilled the boxes; updated my bee log after each visit in the hives, named all my bees, and may actually (fingers crossed) not have to chase a swarm through the neighbour’s yard this year. You would think that with all my usual meetings and events cancelled I would have started my update sooner – but no – there are only so many habits I am prepared to change during any pandemic.
Behind the scenes we have been setting up our club regional equipment centres to help new members of the club with mite treatments and their extraction of honey. Werner Grundlingh in Langford, Jim Henry in View Royal, and Kim Miles in Central Saanich each have an oxalic vaporizer and honey extractor that you can rent by the day so check out the website to see who is nearest to you.
Even though things have ground to a halt globally, the bees continue to do their thing and, with the magnificent weather we have had on Vancouver Island, the nectar flow from a variety of trees and plants has provided some beekeepers with an early crop of honey. Our May meeting will look at the advantages and disadvantages of starting the season with packaged bees versus NUCs and then proceed to walk you through the steps of setting up and maintaining a new NUC. We’ll have a question and answer period for your concerns. Our physical meetings may have stopped, if only temporarily, and our on-line presence will fully launch with our May 14th Zoom meeting. We want to answer your questions using the “chat” feature of Zoom and let you answer our quiz on “What’s in bloom?” The technology will bring the CRBA to you rather than you coming to our monthly meeting and it will also allow us to showcase the club to guests who know us through our Facebook page. With the guidance of club member, Brent Lee, you will get all this month’s information you need including Larry Lindahl’s monthly story.
I am excited by the technology at our fingertips though I miss the fun of events like Day of the Honeybee. See you on-line on Thursday!