OUR MEETING VENUE

For complete information and directions to our meeting place, click on: (http://gatewaytotaloffice.com/TheRainerSeminarRoom)

SPRING RESOURCES

Check in with the American Bee Journal for a lot of excellent information. The January installment of their series by Jamie Ellis, “Field Guide to Beekeeping,” (http://www.americanbeejournal.com/site/epage/150780_828.htm)featured a nice synopsis of how to acquire your bees,either nucs or packages. Other archived material in the series, which is all available online, includes the basics of apiary placement, hive types and configurations, equipmentand clothing, as well as the philosophical--”Know Why You Are Keeping Bees.” Also keep an eye on their archives for a detailed article, just out, on installing packages. (by AlphonseAvitabile) A very good set of instructions that describes two ways to introduce package bees to a hive is "The Careand Introduction of Package Bees" by Dana Stahlman;one for new-bees, one for experienced beekeepers.http://www.mtbakerbeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/The-Care-and-The-Installation-of-Package-Bees-by-Dana-Stahlman.doc

BEGINNING BEEKEEPING CLASS

Tuesday, 6pm to 9pm, starting March 17

Opportunity Council Building, 3406 Redwood Ave. between Alderwood Ave. and Hollywood Ave., BellinghamCost: $100, includes text and certificate; $80 for MBBA members. $80 for second member of family

Please let me know, sjomiller@gmail.com, if you areinterested in taking the class. I need to know how many texts to order and set up the meeting space to get started. Thanks, Jo Miller, WA State Master Beekeeper, B.C. Bee Master, Retired State Apiary Inspector, Retired Elementary Educator, Seasoned Teacher of BeginningBeekeeping

March 2015 Newsletter of the Mount Baker Beekeepers Association 1

Next Meeting Wednesday, March 11 Time: 7 PM Gateway Centre Suites 1313 E. Maple St.The Rainier Room, Ste. 301 Bellingham, WA

Here is an opportunity to take a basic beekeeping class from Master Beekeeper Jo Miller. Three hours a week for 11-12 weeks, with fieldexperiences added near the end at no extra charge. The class covers the material in the WA State Master Beekeepers Apprentice level text, with enhanced explanations and examples from my experience.Successful graduates receive Apprentice Certification and the opportunity to join the Journeyman level discussion group which meets once a month.

Meetng RefeshmentsAnyone who cares t share, bring someting

yummy t give us an excuse t socialize and schmooze about bees.(Don't forget clean-up!)

WHOSE HIVE IS THAT ANYWAY?

When you become a beekeeper, or are even interested in our apian friends, you start to notice every beehive tucked into a backyard or perched outin a field. Each one of those hives has a story, as does their caretaker. We have a wonderful diversity of beekeepers here in Whatcom county. In what is

hopefully just the first of many, MBBA correspondent Nick Molenda interviews one of our interesting members who has taken on the

challenges of urban beekeeping AND poultry raising in addition to teaching beekeeping skills to others.

MEET MIGUEL BORISSby Nick Molenda

Spend a little time talking with Mt. Baker Bee Club member Miguel Boriss and you’ll find he has a real passion for beekeeping.“I first became interested with honey bees back in high school, and about nine years ago I got started with my first hive in the backyard.I’ve had up to 10 hives at one time here, but seven hives seems to be a good number to manage for me right now. Working full time plus a family keeps me plenty busy.”

Set at the rear of a neat and tidy backyard, past the patio and garden, Miguel’s apiary is built on a smart- looking raised narrow deck. The row of hives sits fourfeet off the ground. Built under the deck is the chicken coop. (Nicely placed for tossing scraps of drone brood to the chickens!) A tall cedar plank fence provides needed privacy from the alley for this Bellingham urban beekeeper. Miguel works hard to grow the bee colonies and raise his own queens. “I just use a basic method of choosing strong queens from doing splits and raising new queens that are adapted to our climate. Not having to buy bees or queens from California is my goal. Last summer I tried doing some late splits so this year I have some young queens to start with.”

How is it having a backyard apiary in the middle of Bellingham? “I think one of the most important aspects of keeping bees in the city is good hive management. Prevent swarms if you can, so you don’t aggravate your neighbors. Keeping the number of hives small helps.

Giving them honey works well too! Managing the bee hives for swarms and disease control is one of my toppriorities.”

Miguel says his favorite part of keeping bees is on a warm sunny day in the spring, just watching the bees. “I love the sound and the smell of the hive.

Miguel's hives perched on a platform over his chicken coop makes optimal use of backyard space. A nearby shed offersan ideal storage area for beekeeping equipment.

You can smell the nectar, smell the pollen and the honey. You can hear the buzzing of the bees. It just feels good.I also enjoy talking about honeybees with fellow beekeepers, my neighbors, or newly interested ones. It must be the teacher in me.”Advise to new beekeepers? “Jump right in. Read some books. Join the club. Work with a mentor if youcan. Just have fun!”

Seen here with the family that keeps him busy, Miguelalso teaches 8th grade science at Fairhaven Middle School.

He's been a teacher for 13 years.

March 2015 Newsletter of the Mount Baker Beekeepers Association 2

IN THE NEWS

Seen recently in the NY Times, reports of aviation and apiary pairings are a growing trend. “Sweet Beginnings” out of Chicago is particularly interesting in that they are doing a lot of promoting for their products and program, which provides opportunities for parolees. Will the Port of Bellingham be in the bee biz in the future?

Now Cleared for Landing at Airports:Bees

By DANIELLE BEURTEAUXFEB. 19, 2015

Bees cluster at the base of a hive located on an outlying field atMontréal-Mirabel International Airport in Mirabel, Québec.

MIRABEL, Quebec — A jet taxied down a nearbyrunway, the roar of its engines merging with the

steady buzz of thousands of wings. His head coveredwith a beekeeper’s veil, Alexandre Beaudoin lifted aframe out of one of five buzzing hives, each housingabout 70,000 bees. The bees paid no attention to his

intrusion — they were sedated with smoke first — andcontinued their work.

The hives had been in place only a few months, and Mr. Beaudoin seemed pleased with the results.“This frame is full of eggs; this is really nice, really good info,” he said. “It tells me my hive is in really good health.”

To find these hives, you would have to travel the warren of back roads at Montreal-Mirabel International Airport, pass through a security gate, and go through a parking lot and onto a grass enclosure where a sign announces: Attention Abeilles. Beyond are the airport’s 6,000 acres.

Last year, Aeroports de Montreal, the corporation that runs both of the city’s airports, Mirabel and Montreal-Trudeau International, approached Miel Montreal, a beekeeping cooperative that Mr. Beaudoin helped to found. As part of its environmental initiative — Aeroports de Montreal was the first Canadian airport to sell its carbon credits — it wanted to start a pilot project placing beehives in an empty field. The hives were installed in June.

Mirabel is just the latest in what is becoming a common undertaking — keeping beehives on airport green space. For airports, beehives can be an easy way to flaunt green credentials while putting space to work in fields that legally cannot be built on. And bees are endearing in a way carbon credits, cardboard recyclingand composting are not.

The first was Hamburg Airport in Germany in 1999. Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Dresden, Hannover, Leipzig/Halle, Nuremberg and Munich followed. Sincethen, Malmo Airport in Sweden, Copenhagen, Chicago’s O’Hare, Seattle-Tacoma International and Lambert-St. Louis International have all welcomed beehives.

The relationship is a symbiotic one: Urban beekeepers need more space, and airports have space to spare. Bees do well in urban environments where there are people to manage the hives, diversity of flowers and noagricultural pesticides.

When the Chicago Department of Aviation wanted to expand O’Hare’s green initiative — the airport was already composting and keeping a grazing herd of rescued animals — its commissioner, Rosemarie Andolino, approached Brenda Palms Barber, the founder and chief executive of Sweet Beginnings, a nonprofit group that provides job training to men and women recently released from prison. Ms. Palms Barber, looking to expand (the group has 131 hives around Chicago), requested room for 25 at O’Hare.It now has 75, making it the largest airport apiary project in the world.

Copenhagen Airport’s plans to become a major Scandinavian hub turned into an opportunity for the city’s bees. It bought a large plot of land to build on, but a muddy pond in one corner of the lot is home to the protected European green toad, according to Oliver Maxwell, director of the City Bee Association in Copenhagen.

“The nature people came down and said, ‘There’s absolutely no way you’re building on this muddy pond,’ ” Mr. Maxwell said. “So they were holding this piece of land for the last few years wondering what to

March 2015 Newsletter of the Mount Baker Beekeepers Association 3

do with it, and now it’s overgrown and actually this beautiful meadow with wildflowers.”

There are now 15 hives on the site, installed and tended by Mr. Maxwell’s group, and some of the honeyis sold in the airport’s gift shops.

At European airports, the focus is often on using bee products, like pollen and honey, as biomarkers to detect pollutants. Malmo Airport began testing honey and beeswax from its hives in 2009. The results indicate that levels of heavy metals, volatile organic hydrocarbons and polyaromatic hydrocarbons are wellbelow European Union limits, and have remained

consistent from year to year. “The environment near the airport is not so bad as people thought,” said Maria

Bengtsson, the airport’s environmental manager.For nearly a decade, scientists have been alarmed by steep drops in honeybee populations. Annual losses of around 30 percent, on average, have been attributed tocolony collapse disorder and other pressures, including diseases, pesticides, extreme weather and habitat loss. The toll appeared to ease slightly last year, though researchers cautioned that one year hardly indicated a trend.

While airport hives will have only a limited role in propping up bee populations, Elina Lastro Niño,* an apiculturist at the University of California, Davis, said that as long as there was no spraying of pesticides, airports could make great environments for honeybees, and could help educate the public.

*The January issue of Bee Culture magazine featured the story of Elina Niño and her new position as UC Davis Extension Apiarist. Her work with queen pheromone biology is particularly interesting.

“If you have an airport where you’re selling honey that comes from the airport itself,” Dr. Niño said, travelers are likely to become “more aware of issues with honey.”

There is little operational concern about bees interacting with aircraft: If bee and jet meet, the bee will lose. But there have been recent swarming incidents, a natural occurrence when a second queen leaves the hive in search of a new home and around half the hive’s bees follow.

A swarm at O’Hare in July most likely involved wild bees, Ms. Palms Barber said: The airport’s gates are

more than three miles from the Sweet Beginnings hives, well outside the bees’ normal foraging range.

The swarming bees were removed by Sweet Beginnings’ head beekeeper, John Hansen, with a special vacuum. Ms. Andolino said there were occasional swarms before the hives were installed.Christiane Beaulieu, the Montreal airport company’s vice president of public affairs and communication, said that if the bees did well in this first year at Mirabel, the project would be expanded to the busier Trudeau International.

But for Mr. Beaudoin, honey remains a precious commodity. “In the whole life of one bee, it’s only going to produce one-eighth of a teaspoon,”

he says. “When you have that in mind, try putting two soup spoons on your toast in the morning.”

New from WicwasPress

The Beekeeper'sProblem Solver: 100Common Problems

Explored and ExplainedBy James Tew

This book, for new-bees and experienced beeks, aims to “nip problems in

the bud,” and also how to avoid them in the first place. Bee Bits would love to post a review of this!(http://wicwaspress.com/)

March 2015 Newsletter of the Mount Baker Beekeepers Association 4

Not just Europe or Chicago—here are hives nestled close to the runways at SEATAC.

FREE STUFF!

Jo Miller has assorted, clean wine and sparklingcider bottles to give away. Closures vary: crimp

top, cork, and screw-on. Also a variety of jars forhoney: quart and smaller. The little jars are great

for those token presents or samples. Contact sjomiller@gmail.com if you are interested.I don't want to have to load them and haul them if

no one wants them.

THINGS TO DO IN MARCH

Time to check your bees, if you haven't already with our unusually warm “winter.” Look for the warmest opportunity and check stores of pollen and honey. Start feeding if necessary. Consider unpacking any winter protection, but be watchful for a late freeze. Assess the need for new queens and prepare for requeening if necessary.

March 2015 Newsletter of the Mount Baker Beekeepers Association 5

LINKS TO LOVE

If you were completely captivated the first time you saw your very own bees do the waggle dance,then you'll enjoy this well-done explanation by researchers at Georgia Tech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFDGPgXtK-

U&feature=em-share_video_user

And here's a fascinating interactive pollen chart from the UK: http://www.sheffieldbeekeepers.org.uk/tools/pollen-chart/

Editor's note: Anyone with equipment, beekeeping supplies,or anything of particular interest to beekeepers, submit your information to: mailto:beebits@mtbakerbeekeepers.org