Welcome to the Lane County Beekeepers Association! |
| New Beekeepers: It's Installation Time! Getting ready to install your bees? Whether you're working with packages or nucs, we’ve got the info you need - from installation tips to feeding guidance. And if you run into any issues, don’t worry you can always "Ask A Beekeeper" for help! | LCBA Nucs Available In May 2nd Order LCBA has more nucs available for sale. Contact Ariel if you would like to place an order. Pickup date will be in mid-May. arielnesika@gmail.com
|
Monthly Meetings: We meet on the third Tuesday of each month (except December)at the Eugene Science Center. Our meetings are open to everyone and guests are invited to attend. We usually have an Early Educational session at 6:15pm. Our General Meeting starts at 7:30pm. Check our Events Page for a calendar of upcoming meeting topics and events.
|
|
A note from the LCBA President April 2025
Norm Jarvis
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s April, and we are now fully into our ‘busy bee’ season. More things are blooming every day so the foragers are out collecting nectar and pollen. That means that the queens are increasing egg-laying and hives are rapidly expanding. Keep in mind that we’re not out of the woods yet in terms of hive survival. Hive populations can out-pace the available food supply, leading to starvation and hive ‘dead-out’. You should still be supplementing their supplies with dry sugar, fondant or sugar patties until temperatures are consistently above 55 degrees (probably by the end of April). After that, you can begin feeding a 1:1 sugar syrup solution to help boost the colony.
On the other side… if a colony gets too robust, or space-limited, it may decide to swarm. The height of swarm season is anytime between now and June, although swarms can certainly occur later. This can be both a good and bad thing. If half of your colony swarms away, it may be bad for your hive strength, but if you can capture a wild swarm, or one from a neighboring bee yard, it may be good for increasing your genetic diversity. So, just in time, our “Beginning Beekeeping” education series this month will be about swarm biology and behavior, given by Hamm Vitrifex. It is a great presentation so please make it to the meeting on the 15th if you can!
On a more LCBA business note, this month we will be sending out a new issue of our club bylaws to all current LCBA members. This is the document that guides how our association is organized and run. This new version is particularly important because it has been rewritten to comply with the IRS government regulations that govern non-profit organizations.
Our club has been in existence since 1976 and has always been operated as a “Not-for-Profit” organization under section 501(c)5 of the IRS code. We are now in the process of requesting a change of status to a “Non-Profit” organization under section 501(c)3. This may seem like a trivial bureaucratic paper change, but it actually has significant practical benefits for us. As a Non-Profit, we can apply for charitable contributions and private or non-private grants that we otherwise would not be able to get. And donations of goods or services (even volunteer work you might give!) would now qualify as tax-deductible itemized deductions on your tax return. So the important thing here is that our current bylaws require that we send proposed changes to the bylaws out to our members for review, and then one month later, hold a vote at our general membership meeting on accepting or rejecting those changes. I am asking that you please review the changes we are proposing, and be ready to vote on them at the general membership meeting on May 20th.
Happy beekeeping!
Norm
|