September 25, 2017 Minutes

General Meeting of the Willamette Valley Beekeeping Association

25 September 2017
Chemeketa Community College Bldg. 8, Rm 201

The September meeting was called to order by President Richard Ferrier at 7:10 PM.

Announcements: Richard announced the October meeting will be in Bldg. 9 Rm 111.

OSBA Conference will be held October 27-29, 2017 at the Oregon Garden in Silverton, Oregon. Pre-registration will need to be completed by October 17 to save on costs. Go to osba2017.orsba.org to register.

The extractor has been moving around. There are still 6-8 more folks to extract, but the exchanges have been going fast.

Yellowjacket bait—Onslaught is a good bait. You add cat food, tuna or chicken to the bait and the wasps take it back to the colony and it kills the entire colony. It shouldn’t contaminate your hives. The dosage is 1/4 tsp. per 12 ounces of bait.

Ana brought in a hive in order for folks to get an idea of how much their hives should weigh going into winter. She has put 60 lbs. of weight inside. For a 10 frame hive that is around the targeted weight, for an 8 frame hive it should at least weigh 50 lbs.

Richard broke us into groups to discuss issues in smaller groups. We had three groups, with Richard, Fred and Mona leading the group discussions. We had around an hour, then took a break and started up again, mixing up the groups.

We came back together at the end to raffle some donated items including a trip to the annual OSBA meeting in Silverton next month.

There being no further business to come before the club, the meeting was adjourned at 9:10 PM.

Respectfully submitted,
Shelley Gowell, Secretary