Our local bee club has an open apiary where mentors work with beginners to learn beekeeping hands on. The apiary is located on private property situated in an agricultural area of prime bottom land. The landowners have established a cut flower business and greenhouses. One greenhouse close to the hives is dedicated to growing hot house tomatoes and seedlings. We were greeted by the owner who let us come in and watch the bumble bees pollinating the tomatoes. He explained that the seed for his hot house tomatoes comes from Sweden and costs $1.00 per seed. A country market is on sight to sell flowers, bedding plants, eggs, tomatoes, etc. but they also sell at the local farmer's market too.
This past weekend was the first open apiary of the season. I helped Sunday afternoon. We had a great group of 18 present.
There was plenty for them to see. Besides seeing eggs, larvae, and the queen, marking the queen, we found a drone laying colony, installed a package of bees, requeened 2 colonies, demonstrated feeders, showed colonies that were prime for swarming (8 frames or more of brood present), and saw what we think were the effects of agricultural spraying. In previous inspections done by the organizers, it was suspected that every colony had European foulbrood. Our inspections yesterday showed some signs or dead, off color larvae slumped down in some cells. Other sections on the same frame had healthy larvae. Given the location, we decided it was the effects of agricultural spraying and that the colonies would be fine.
