Staying Busy

This summer has been a busy time. Lots of activity around the island with folks calling about swarms establishing themselves in walls, beneath decks, up in the eaves and even in trees. Been hard to keep up. Spending a lot of time building boxes, frames and coordinating crews to help folks out with their problematic visitors. Sure do appreciate all the folks who choose to remove them instead of extermination. Often this is much more expensive but it is a better alternative as it helps the bees the do their pollination service which helps us have more local food to enjoy. So mahalo to all of you who choose the eco-friendly alternative to extermination as a means to rid yourself of nuisance bees in your home.

Here's a link to a great article I read online this weekend. It's about backyard beekeeping and how to get started. If this interests you, come to a KBee meeting and get involved in keeping bees on Kaua'i. As the article points out it's really simple to get started. Here's a couple of video links showing you how some folks do it. This one's really good. There's a second part to it. There's lots of useful online information out there.

For more information about beekeeping here on Kaua'i you might want to come to KCC later this week. KBEE will be hosting Darcy Oishi from the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture on Thursday evening. Darcy who is the state coordinator of HDOA's varroa mite project will be discussing, amongst other topics, an upcoming visit by researchers from the USDA doing a varroa monitoring project in the state. The monitors from USDA will visit all the islands that have not reported varroa mite and Kaua'i is their first stop. Their visit will be next week on Monday and Tuesday. They will be presenting at KCC on Monday evening. I haven't received all the details from Darcy but will post more information before their arrival.

Here's the details for this Thursday's KBEE meeting:

Time:  Thursday 8.5.10 6:00pm- 7:30pm

Location: KCC Electronic Technology Building-Conference Room ( look for KBee banner)

 

This is an open meeting and all interested community members are welcomed. Hope you can make it.