How much surplus honey have your bees stored this year? Our active storage season is over or about over by this time – the rest of the season bees collect only enough to keep going. Once you harvest your surplus I encourage you to sign up to exhibit your honey in the State Fair honey show (registration deadline online August 7th, 2014) and OSBA Seaside annual meeting (entries due first day of the conference November 7th, 2014). Could your honey win a top prize in both – win the Daily Double?? Think of the bragging rights!!!
The State Fair Honey Show has been extensively revamped this year. Honey and Products of the Bee Hive is now a separate division of the Fair. We have been able to get the judging standards and the entry categories modernized. See the State Fair Exhibitor handbook for details (www.oregonstatefair.org) to download a booklet with details on the Honey Show. The Honey Show will have 4 divisions of Beekeeping photographs (3 classes), Beeswax (4 classes), Extracted Honey (3 color classes – 3 pint or pound jars per entry), and a class of other Honey (5 classes comb/cut-comb/chunk/creamed/extracting frame). There is no entry fee. Ribbons (1st, 2nd, & 3rd) for each class. Two entry levels A. Youth (17 and under) and B. Oregon adult beekeeper.
Entries must be entered ONLINE by August 7, 2014. Honey show entries will be accepted at the Salem Fairgrounds Saturday August 9 (noon to 8 PM) and Sunday August 10 (noon to 8 PM). Judging will be Saturday August 16, 2014, the weekend before the fair opens.
FAIR DISPLAY VOLUNTEER: Entering honey is a good way to educate yourself and the general public about bees. I also encourage you to give back to the general public some of what you know about honey bees by volunteering to assist with the Fair Bee Display. WVBA Day at the State Fair is Monday August 25,2014. The State Association website (orsba.org) is open for volunteer sign up. We need individual names, cell numbers, and addresses for EACH WVBA volunteer so we can send free entry and parking tickets. We need WVBA volunteers to not only fill the WVBA club day (we can use up to 4 volunteers each of the 3 time slots (10-2, 2-6, 6-to close)) but at other times for the 10 day Fair run – in fact we rely heavily on WVBA to fill the majority of volunteer slots at the fair. To sign up go directly to the volunteer sign up form at:
http://orsba.org/htdocs/statefairvolunteer.php
using password “BEECLUBS”. This password will be valid ONLY until end of July after which any volunteer might be able to sign up as the website will not be password protected. Note: If any volunteer is interested but unable to be at the fair on the club date, please contact Trevor Riches directly at (osbastatefair@gmail.com) so we can help them get their preferred volunteer date and time.
SEASIDE CONFERENCE: The Annual Oregon beekeepers meeting will be November 6-8, 2014 at the Seaside Convention Center. In addition to the honey show we will show the prize-winning movie “More than Just Honey” at our Thursday night social. The program Friday and Saturday features Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture Magazine, Dennis vanEngelsdorp of Maryland and Marla Spivak of Minnesota, plus LCBA members Judy Scher and Lynn Royce and the students and bee specialists of OSU and WSU. Mark your calendars now – more information will be posted in August on the orsba.org website. I hope you will consider going this year to Seaside to see what a great meeting we have because next year, 2015, our Annual Conference will be nearby at Oregon Gardens in Silverton, Oregon.