Late Night Visitor

I had a late night visitor to my small bee yard. Hopefully, you won't have this problem. I'm thankful for the PA Game Commission for their quick response. It could have been much worse.

Thursday evening, a bear happened into my bee yard after consuming my neighbor's bird feeders. Lucky for me, he had a bit of a full belly. Still you can see the damage done.

I called PA Game Commission by noon on Friday and registered my damage. An officer from the Game Commission called to investigate my complaint at 2:30 PM. By 4:30 PM, the same day, he dropped off the following baited trap.

The trap door was closed Saturday morning when I woke up and a 300 pound, male black bear made the misstake of thinking those doughnuts were a quicker meal than busting into the bee hives. He earned a free trip to the Ohiopyle area. There's a good chance he might be back. This time he will learn about electricity.

I was very impressed with the effectiveness of the PA Game Commission and how quickly they resonded. When everyone else was enjoying a nice holiday weekend, at least two people were on the clock and doing there job very well. Thanks guys!

Queen Rearing Presentation - May 9, 2008

We had a great presentation at our May meeting by Adam Finkelstein and Kelly Rausch of vpqueenbees.com. It served as a great introduction to the art and science of queen raising. This is a very timely topic with the current launch of the West Virginia Queen Producers Association. Adam will be our instructor for he WVQP training sessions. We went for more than 2 hours as there were many questions from the group. A few AMBA members have experimented with queen raising but only on a small scale.