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Marin County Beekeepers of CA

Thank You for Your $500.00 Donation to PAm!

Treasure Valley Beekeepers Club of Idaho

Thank You for Your $400.00 Donation to PAm!

Treasure Valley Beekeepers Club of Boise, Idaho Donates $400.00

How Can You Help?

Mail Your Contribution

Project Apis m.

P.O. Box 3157

Chico, CA 95927

OR Securely Online

BEE Part of the Solution!

PAm Scientific Advisor and PAm Board Member featured in TIME

Click here

Considering Commercial Beekeeping as a Career?

Bee Culture

The magazine of American beekeeping is hosting...

MILES TO GO

October 5 - 6th

Medina, Ohio

This first-ever conference will highlight every aspect of migratory beekeeping. "If you move bees for a living, are going to or are thinking about it, this two-day event is for you." Click here to register or call Kim Flottum at 330-725-6677 Ext 3214 or email at Kim@BeeCulture.com with 'Miles' in the subject line.

Mark your Calendar!

Sept 19 - Oct 4 Apimondia

Oct 5 - 6 Miles-to-Go

Oct 12 North Dakota

Oct 16 - 19 WAS

Oct 22- 24 NAPPC

Oct 31 - Nov 2 Oregon

Nov 10 -13 ESA

Nov 18 - 22 CSBA

Dec 3 - 5 Almond Board

Jan 7 - 11 AHPA

Jan 7 - 11 ABF

For quick links click here!

Emergency Response Kits (ERK)

Bee Informed Partnership and the USDA have piloted a program to aid beekeepers. ERK is designed to rule out causes of large scale, suspicious colony loss through small scale sampling. The cost of the kit without pesticide analysis is $80. PAm offers a cost-share program for pesticide analyses of hive matrices. View lab directory.

September Bee Husbandry

Transportation

Prepare colonies for transport to California orchards. Have colonies inspected and certified in state-of-origin to mitigate border station delays. Self-inspect colonies prior to shipment. Keep hives and pallets free from soil, weeds and plant debris.

Business Management

Maintain a reserve; don't commit all your colonies to contract.

Inspect and Monitor

Continue to inspect colonies and apply treatments as necessary to control pests and diseases.

Pollination Contract

Have your almond pollination contract in place by the end of the summer at the latest. A contract template can be accessed by clicking on the picture below.

Pollination Contract Template

September 2013

Fall is the Time to Sow Seeds for Bees

"Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play." This verse is the first line of Home on the Range, the state song of Kansas. On the Konza Prairie, in the Flint Hills of northeastern Kansas, the American Bison still does roam. PAm was invited last month to tour the Konza Prairie Biological Station, a 8,816 acre native tallgrass prairie preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State University.

The Konza Prairie is one of the most productive grasslands in North America. It is also one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. Tallgrass prairies historically covered a large portion of the Central Plains but much of this prairie has disappeared, largely due to agriculture conversion.

Bison, ground nesting birds, waterfowl, songbirds and countless other species are affected by changing land use - including bees. The Second Biennial Conference on the Conservation of America's Grasslands was held in Manhattan, Kansas. The 3-day conference was organized by the Nat'l Wildlife Federation, Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State University.

Rare to this venue was a pollinator symposium. PAm board member, Zac Browning, Browning's Honey Co., Inc., spoke about protecting honey bees and their food resources; Matthew Smart, U of Minn and PAm funded researcher, on the health of bees across varying landscapes; and Christi Heintz on PAm's bee forage efforts. The organizing committee recognizes that there is value in protecting the prairie for pollinators.

The honey bee needs a home. A place to roam.

Meg Ribotto, Editor

PAm Sows ...

816 Acres of Forage for Honey Bees in CA

Backed with continued funding to buy seeds for the 'Seeds for Bees' forage project, PAm has garnered over eight hundred acres of almond grower property just since August 5th...land that will be sowed with mustards, clovers and vetch for honey bees. These bee pastures will provide nutritional resources prior to and after almond bloom when two-thirds of the nation's colonies are in the state for pollination services. PAm isn't stopping with these 816 acres. Daily phone calls are being made to almond growers asking them to dedicate any amount of acreage to a cover crop for pollinators.

Beekeepers: Contact Your Almond Growers

Are you a beekeeper and have a grower-pollinator relationship with a grower in CA? Tell them about our 'Seeds for Bees' forage project. We are shipping FREE seed mixes (click) this month to sow September 10th through November 10th - the ideal window when the soil is still warm and before the first germinating rains.

They can contact us at ProjectApis@gmail.com

How can YOU convince your grower to order and sow seeds for your honey bees?

Say this...

Planting a bee forage cover crop will: improve soil fertility, increase organic material, fix nitrogen, improve water infiltration, suppress noxious weeds, conserve soil moisture, increase beneficial insects, and reduce soil erosion.

The Mike Nowak Show WCPT Radio, Chicago

Features Beekeeper & PAm Board Member Zac Browning

Listen to the Podcast here.

Zac gives his perspective

(at 17 min) on the importance of forage for bees.

2nd Int'l Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health and Policy at PSU

August 14 - 17th Penn State gathered reps from Canada, Germany, England, Spain, Belgium, USDA-NRCS, USDA-ARS, Food & Ag Organization of the UN, Farm Service Agency, CropLife, EPA and numerous US university researchers. Topics included; Pollinator Behavioral Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Ecology and Conservation, Policy and Public Outreach and Host-Parasite Interactions. PAm was included in the Poster Session 'Enhancing the Health of Honey Bees' and had a table where outreach materials were distributed. PAm also co-sponsored the 3-day event.

Blue Diamond Growers - THE largest almond grower co-op, is talking honey bees. Their July/August issue, with distribution to 7,500, has a 4-page article on the almond farmer's dependence on the work provided by the honey bee for crop production. This in-depth article covers the causes of bee decline, as well as what is being done about the problem and what almond growers can do. NOTE: PAm was highlighted in the Editor's Note: Special thanks to Randy Oliver of ScientificBeeKeeping.com, to Project Apis m. and to the beekeeping community for their extensive research. Read the full article here.

PAm Leverages Grant Funding with Corporate Funding

What does that mean? When the three-year 2010 California Department of Agriculture (CDFA) Specialty Crop Block Grant awarded to the California State Beekeepers Association (CSBA) and managed by PAm came to an end in June, funding to buy seeds for the 'Seeds for Bees' forage project has continued with Monsanto funding. PAm has identified forage seeds and works with independent seed suppliers in CA and AZ.

CSBA, Almond Board and PAm Co-Fund

CA Border Station Hose Bibs

Migratory beekeepers bringing their colonies into CA this coming pollination season will have access to water at several border inspection stations. The CA Dept of Food & Ag (CDFA) is installing multiple heavy duty hoses that will extend from the water lines to the shippers' trucks to provide water to the bees. The border stations include: Benton, Needles, Truckee and Yermo. Click on the photo above for helpful tips on pre-outfitting your trucks with coupling hoses. PAm also has a PDF guide. The California State Beekeepers Association (CSBA), the Almond Board and PAm each contributed $10,000 to this project - practical solutions for beekeepers!

Project Apis m | | christih@cox.net | http://www.ProjectApism.org
P. O. Box 3157
Chico, CA 95927