GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING INFORMATION
The PPBA meets from 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm on the third Thursday of the months of January, April, July and October. We are looking for a permanent location for our meeting but in the meantime, please be aware that the meeting locations may change from meeting to meeting.
The first half hour (6:30-7:00) of the PPBA General Membership meetings is reserved for socializing and general questions. The formal portion of the meeting will start promptly at 7:00 pm and will include association business and the presentations for that meeting. There will be time for questions during or after the formal portion of the meeting, but those questions should be limited to the topics being discussed.
Thursday, July 18th, 6:30pm: GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING
The next PPBA General Membership Meeting will be Thursday, July 18th, at the Gold Hills Mesa Police Station, 955 West Moreno Ave, in Colorado Springs. Informal questions and meeting begins at 6:30, the formal portion of the meeting begins at 7:00.
The Guest Speaker will be Charlotte Hubbard, beekeeper, teacher, author and speaker from Kalamazoo, Michigan. She is known for overwintering her colonies and was Michigan’s 2018 Beekeeper of the Year. She teaches beekeeping and is well-known throughout the beekeeping communities in Michigan. You can read about Charlotte at: https://hubbardhive.com/
Meetings are open to the public.
2024 MEETING AND EVENT DATES
July 18th – General Membership Meeting
August 24th – Honey Extraction Demo at Bear Creek
September 7th – Bee Yard Visit
October 17th – General Membership Meeting
HELP OUT PPBA – VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES!
MENTORING! If you’ve been a beekeeper for a while and would like to be a mentor, contact PikesPeakBeekeepers@gmail.com to update the roster and get hooked up with a beekeeper who may need some help!
PPBA Guest Speakers. PPBA gets lots of requests for guest speakers at schools, service organizations and local expos or events. Most speaker requests are just for a one-hour long presentation on beekeeping. If you could speak about beekeeping to a school or group, please email PikesPeakBeekeepers@gmail.com
WHAT’S THE BUZZ?
HOSTING BEEHIVES! If you want to put a hive on someone’s property – we have people who want bees but don’t want to be the beekeeper! Some are in town (Colorado Springs) and some are out east of Colorado Springs. Contact PikesPeakBeekeepers@gmail.com for more info!
PPBA ON FACEBOOK! Join the “Pikes Peak Beekeepers Association” group on Facebook! You do not have to be a member of PPBA to join, but membership is limited to beekeepers, interest in beekeeping, and Front Range.
WATCH WHERE YOU ARE GETTING YOUR BEES AND QUEENS FROM!! PPBA members – just a reminder: please use caution when ordering queens and bees … please ensure they are NOT from the southern tier of states (including Texas, southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida). There have been reports of “hot” queens (Africanized) coming out of those states. As one queen producer states on their website: “Inter-breeding with feral Africanized bees does undoubtedly continue but we take measures to minimize their influence.” They try to make sure their mating yards are primarily “safe” drones, but as you can imagine, there’s no guarantee that Africanized drones are not present and are not mating with their queens. We want to prevent importing any Africanized bees into Colorado. Be sure you know where your bee supplier is getting those bees from!!
INTEGRATED HIVE MANAGEMENT FOR COLORADO BEEKEEPERS. This booklet is published by Colorado State University and is now available on-line! The sub-title is “Strategies for Identifying and Mitigating Pests and Diseases Affecting Colorado’s Honey Bees” and it covers everything from mice to mites! Check it out on this link. We also have two hardcopies in the PPBA library for check-out. CO-IHM-Book-for-Print-2020.pdf (colostate.edu)
BEAR DAMAGE!! If you have bear or wildlife damage to your hive, contact the Colorado Division of Wildlife at Colorado Parks & Wildlife – Game Damage (state.co.us) for information about filing a claim.
DRIFTWATCH: “DriftWatch™ is a tool for identifying specialty crop sites and to further enhance communications between producers of specialty crops and pesticide applicators that promote awareness and stewardship activities to help prevent and manage drift effects that sometimes occur from spray operations.” You can register your beehive location and they will notify you before any pesticides are applied (in rural areas; not intended for sites less than ½ acre).
EXTRACTOR RENTAL: To rent one of the PPBA extractors (we have three manual extractors and most of the other extractor equipment you’ll need), visit http://www.pikespeakbeekeepers.org, select the “Extractor Rental Info” tab and follow the instructions there. Remember, the extractor and equipment will be clean when you pick it up and it will need to be cleaned prior to return or you will forfeit your deposit. Hot water and soap at the coin operated car wash is the quickest and easiest method for initial cleaning. Then, thoroughly rinse with clean water at home. There’s also a link on the website to a video about cleaning the extractor.
BEES IN THE NEWS
To save the bees, a Kansas scientist is building an app to identify thousands of species
Generation Wild providing wildflower seeds throughout Colorado to benefit bees
PPBA 
Leave a comment