Bee News

Good Stuff from Randy:

1. Good to see Susan and Mary Ellen at bee school. Greg Mabrey and his family were also taking classes. This is good to see. Attendance was around 400 people. The only way to learn is to go to these things. Cheap and easy to do.
2. Pay attention to KSBA web site for info about meeting in April @ Lebanon Junction. Limited to about 300.
3. Also check out info for June meeting at W. T. Kelley Company. Again only about 500 can be admitted. You need to register early.
4. I talked to Rick Sutton extensively about state of bees in Florida and Kentucky. Rick winters several thousand hives in Florida and ships to California to pollinate almonds in February. A lot of big operations had devastating losses in the thousands due to a bad outbreak of CCD. One of the worst loss seasons on record.
5. Most Ky. operators I talked to have no real good feel just yet for their losses to this point. Rick told me they were about 400,000 hives short for almond pollination statewide due to poor bee conditions.
6. Bee friends around Lawrenceburg and Lexington still don't have a good feel for local bee conditions or ability to do spring splits just yet. Maples and dandelions getting ready to bust out. Best thing that can happen to the bees right now. Brood levels will sky rocket with some decent weather.
7. Get brood boxes and frames ready now. State wide we are about 2 weeks behind in plant development talking to bee guys around state. With good weather mother nature will constrict this down to days fast.

And in fact we may be further behind than two weeks versus last year. I can recall cleaning up the week after the ice storm last february and noticing maple blooms. This is good stuff from Randy and he is correct the more you see the more you learn.