Angie and I attended our first St. Clair Beekeepers Association meeting. The meeting was held at the Farm Bureau Building in Edwardsville, on Friday evening, January 28th. We were both surprised, as there were a LOT of people there! When Ken, the President, asked for a show of hand of new people attending the meeting, there were about a dozen of us.
The meeting was conducted in a semi-informal fashion, but order was sustained, and things moved along pretty well. They showed a great video presentation regarding the Small Hive Beetle. This beetle has become a nuisance pest to Honey Bees, but a strong colony seems to be able to defend itself fairly well against this bug. There were several long time SCBA members that reminisced about the past during the meeting, and it was interesting to hear Mr. Udell Meyer talk about how things have changed since he began keeping Honey Bees in the 1950's.
We also signed up for the beginning beekeepers course that is organized and led by several members of the SCBA. This course will be in February at the Farm Bureau building in Belleville. Angie and I are both looking forward to this class, so we can learn more about this new adventure.
All in all, I was impressed with the number of people that are attending the meetings, and they all seemed to be nice, down home type of people. We look forward to going to the upcoming class, and we can't wait until we start nurturing our first colony of Honey Bees this spring!
