ChesLen Preserve Pavilion
June 8th meeting: ChesLen Preserve Pavilion:
a) The next outdoor meeting is at ChesLen Preserve Pavilion
1199 Cannery Road, Coatesville, PA 19320 starting at 9:00 am. Please dress for the weather and please bring your own chair.
b) We will start at 8:30 am with our panel discussion.
c) The topics will be:
1) ‘Introduction’ by Keith Jardine at 9:00 am,
2) ‘Honey Extraction:’ Please bring your equipment for our demonstration. We will have extraction demos, uncapping demos. We could extract a small amount of honey for you.
i) How to remove the bees from the honey supers (chemicals, one-way escapes, bee brush, shaking, etc.),
ii) Queen excluder (should we use?),
iii) What frames to take (fully capped, ¾ capped honey, or all honey)
iv) What size of honey frames (shallow, medium, deep?),
v) What uncapping instrument is best? (capping scratcher, hot knife, cold knife, roller un-capper, planer, table-top / sideline, chain, slicer, etc.),
vi) Extractors: (powered, manual, 2-frame, 8-frame, etc.),
vii) Strainers: (plastic, metal, cheesecloth),
viii) Honey storage containers (glass, plastic, pails),
ix) Refractometer (do we need this instrument?),
x) Comb honey, chunk and cut comb,
xi) Keeping bees away from the extraction operation,
xii) What to do with the wax and wet combs (freezing, cleaning by the bees),
3) ‘Honey Tasting’ – please bring a sample of your honey for us to taste and test with the club refractometer,
4) Break
5) ‘Raffle with wonderful prizes’,
6) ‘Breakout for beginners’,
7) Intermediate Michael Langer
8) Advanced – discussion on the latest with swarm prevention techniques. Updates on Demaree and Werner methods.
d) Please bring plants to share with other members. Bruce B will be bringing some Pussy Willow cuttings.
e) We have a large coffee urn and two flasks for your use in the kitchen area thanks to Donna.
f) It would be great if you could bring cookies and snacks for our fellow members. It is not only our bees that need feeding