by Mary Laura Fitzgerald
On May 18, members of the Upper Eastern Shore Beekeeping Association and other local beekeepers gathered for an in-hive workshop with Dr. Zac Lamas of UMBC. It was a great day of hands-on education and a great opportunity to contribute to Zac’s new bee lab with the money raised by the workshop.
After a small lunch with the speaker and a great deal of fishing talk, we dove in to the workshop at Shrewsbury Parish in Kennedyville, Maryland on the Eastern Shore. The topic of the workshop was Making Splits Without Moving Mites.
The workshop participants started the session by inspecting the hives provided by the parish and long time Eastern Shore beekeeper, Sam Beachy. After determining whether the colonies needed to be split or not, we pulled frames from them hives to inspect.
Students picked up and inspected drones for varroa and dropped them into alcohol to shake any mites off. For some folks, this was the chance to pick up a honey bee for the first time.
We also picked up newly emerged bees and checked them for varroa, as well as Deformed Wing Virus. We then noted our findings on a chart that Dr. Zac provided.
At the end, with the information we collected, we made decisions about treatment and splitting, and Zac talked for a bit about varroa and the damage they do, as well as his bee lab and the exciting things his students are doing there.
It was a lovely sunny, windy day chock full of information.
Thank you to Shrewsbury Parish, Sam Beachy and his well behaved bees, Gary Robson and Max de Arriz for the logistics and planning, and a special thanks to Dr. Zac Lamas for always being so kind to our club and giving such great education.
