Celebrating National Honey Bee Day with TLC

TLC took part in celebrating National Honey Bee Day with two events last week.

On Thursday, August 14th there was a showing of More Than Honey in The Liberty Room at The Market at Liberty Place.   More Than Honey is a nationally acclaimed film that highlights environmental pressures impacting bee populations across the world.  Experienced beekeepers, novice beekeepers, and those just interested in learning more about these pollinators enjoyed their food from The Market vendors as they learned about the important role that honey bees play in the food that we consume.   TLC recognizes the importance of honey bees and in addition to education through movies like More Than Honey, we also have hives at New Leaf Eco Center which are opened up once a month for our Open Hive Days.

TLC's Observation Hive.

We celebrated National Honey Bee Day officially on Saturday, September 16th with an Open Hive Day at the New Leaf Eco Center. This month our beekeeper, Dan Bokoski, focused on ways to remediate mite problems occurring in the hive. The main step that we focused on was figuring out if your hive has a problem that needs to be treated. This is done by calculating the percentage of mites in a hive. Dan's preferred method is the powdered sugar technique, where mites are filtered from a jar of honeybees (~400 honeybees) containing powdered sugar and counted. Dan demonstrated this technique to our sharp-eyed group who were able to spot 20 mites that were filtered from the jar. This number is the indicator for treatment versus no treatment. Dan laid down the light, organic treatment, which should alleviate the mite problem on one of our three hives.

There are many things to learn as a prospective and experienced beekeeper. TLC's Open Hive Days are a great place for beekeepers to share ideas, and for new beekeepers to learn the ins and outs of installing and managing a hive on their own properties!

There are two more Open Hive Days left for the 2014 year: Saturday, September 20th and Saturday, October 18th. Both run from 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM and are located at New Leaf Eco Center (776 Rosedale Road, Kennett Square, PA 19348).

Dan Borkoski showing a frame from the hives. In the background are other materials to conduct the mite remediation.