Western PA. beekeeping seminar guest speaker announcement!

The seminar commitee is excited to announce that Mr. James Tew will be speaking at our 2024 seminar. We look forward to having Mr. Tew speak in February. Early bird ticket sales will begin later this year! Below is a quick bio and headshot of James.

Dr. James E. Tew is an Emeritus Faculty member at The Ohio State University and

is also retired from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Having kept

bees for fifty years, Jim has taught beekeeping, researched beekeeping, written

books about beekeeping and produced bee videos. Currently, he co-hosts a

weekly beekeeping podcast, Honey Bee Obscura, and tinkers with a YouTube

channel. Jim enjoys all things that relate to bees.

2023 Beekeeping season off to a great start

Hello to anyone reading this. My name is Dan McKelvey and I am the new guy handling the website updates. I also keep two hives in Bellevue. Below are a few photos of my most recent hive inspection that I thought would share with you all! Please let me know if there are any updates you need on the website. I'm also open to hearing of any changes you think would be beneficial to the site. Thanks! Happy beekeeping!! Dan

Blog - Is that spelled correctly?

So this is my first blog... I declare that so that you don't expect too much out of this effort. I am mainly writing to get the ball rolling on our new blog page, but I would also like to drone on just a bit about my favorite time of the year.

Springtime has to be my favorite time of the year and to clarify - Swarm Season is my favorite time. For me there is nothing quite like finding a nice size swarm and hiving them successfully. I enjoy high swarms, where I get to use my fancy Little Giant Ladder and extension pole and bucket. My personal best is about 27 ft. I enjoy Low swarms where it is easy picking as well even though they are not quite as challenging. Come mid April, I am shaking the winter off of me, and packing my small hatchback with my ladder, pole, bucket, hive body and bee vacuum in anticipation of that first swarm call. The picture shows one of the first swarms from this year - It was a huge swarm that I had to break into two separate hives due to the size. I hived about 15 swarms this year and had a blast doing it.

Of course with all good things, Swarm season has come to a close, and with it my excitement has waned. It will take a long cold winter to get me all psyched up to go hunting swarms again, but it was fun while it lasted.

So that is it - The first BVABA blog, for what it is worth. Hope you come back to check out some of the content from our more accomplished bloggers.

Darryl

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Hello All !!! Renee's Blog: March 29, 2022

I've been asked to share my experiences as a new beekeeper to the site. I hope you get some laughs and learn what NOT to do, lol. I have a blog on Facebook I share with my family and friends. If I can figure out how to link it you can see more, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy :-)

For years I've been thinking about keeping bees, but wasn't 100% serious. I've always wanted to help the bees so I would plant seeds in my flower bed every year. I would see bumble bees, but really not too many honey bees and that made me sad. I was hearing honey bees were getting fewer in numbers because of the pesticides. Even in our yard, which is covered with clover, we only had a few. I finally wanted to do something about it. Last year, 2021, at the tail end of winter, I was looking more into how to get started with being a beekeeper. Like some of our seasoned beekeepers, you hear from friends and family "you're going to do what?" LOL. None of their comments swayed me. My mind was set!! I had ordered my package of bees and made the commitment to do online zoom courses with Beaver Valley Area Beekeeping Association. We met one day out of the month (i want to say 5 or 6 months) and the club would have speakers that talked about various topics that were important for keeping bees.

The day finally came!!! April 11th... my mom's birthday and the day my package of bees was ready for pick up!! Nervousness mixed in with excitement were feelings I had for days leading up to this. It was a busy day for me, lol. I met with one of the club mentors, Darryl, at his home and he gave a few of us a hands on lesson on how to get into a hive. SIDE NOTE: New beekeepers... it's very important to team up with a mentor in your area!!! I can't tell you the number of times I needed help or had questions. Everyone is so helpful and accommodating!! Utilize that mentor list on the website!! ANYWAY...being at Darryl's was great considering in a few hours I had to put my new bees into their new home, lol. Spent a few hours with him, then it was off to get my new bees!! I'll just say now, I got my bees, put them into their new home, then had to change to go celebrate my mom's birthday, lol. Watching videos helped with the transition for both them and myself. Below are pics from my first day of being a beekeeper. :-) ** for those that are new, the pic w/ the box with the upside down bucket is sugar water for the bees to feed from until they get used to their new home and find food on their own.