Bayou Beekeepers

On the second Thursday of every month, the Bayou Beekeepers Club meets at a local diner in Jennings called Green's Café.  From 6 to 7 pm we order food.  I generally get fried shrimp or catfish, but this week I had a homemade burger and a root beer.  While we eat, we visit with other beekeepers.  It's usually between 15 and 25 people in attendance.  At 7 pm, the meeting is called to order.  We all rise, and with Old Glory in the corner, we place our hands over our hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  Then the meeting is opened with prayer.

There are always commercial beekeepers as well as homesteaders and hobbyists in attendance.  The meeting begins with general topics and questions and answers.  We talk about what's going on right now and what you should be doing in your beehives.  Lots of advice is given and people freely talk about what works for them and, also, what doesn't work for them.  We ALWAYS learn something.

Let me tell you a simple, but effective thing we learned at the meeting.  As mentioned in a post back in August, our bees have been making a beeline for the rain barrel on our patio.  They drink the water and bring it back to the hive where they arrive and give the water to the house bees who then spit it on the comb, turn around, and use their wings to 'air condition' the colony via evaporative cooling.  Amazing!

One problem with the bees' air conditioning, however.  Bees aren't proficient swimmers.  They inevitably fall in the water in the process of drinking water and drown.  We go out and rescue them when we see them, but we can't save 'em all.  Numerous bees drown.  The life cycle of a bee is 45 days.  Each bee lost could be making honey, building comb, and doing all the work that busy bees like to do and it takes time for the queen to make replacement bees.  We hate to see them die.

We learned a simple, and cheap, trick at the meeting that alleviates the drowning bee problem.  Simply get pine straw and throw a light layer on top of the water like this:

The honeybees still fly in, crawl down, and drink water.

But if they fall in, now there is a life preserver of sorts for them.  They simply climb atop the pine straw, drink their water and go on about their business.

At the meeting this week, there was a presentation on making candles with the beeswax accumulated while pulling honey.  It was very interesting, showing us how to "wash" the wax, melt it and pour it into molds, keeping the wick in the middle of the candle.  They also talked about making lip balm and chap stick with beeswax.

Always at the end there are door prizes that consist of bee-related items or homesteading gifts.  At this meeting, Tricia won an uncapping fork to use during honey extraction.  We enjoy the Bayou Beekeeping Club.  There's plenty of helpful, friendly folks that are excited about sharing information they've learned over the years.