Flowering Seasons for Western North Carolina Honey and Pollen Sources

The Flowering Chart for WNC plants put together by Edd, Chris, and John has been added to our website's Reference page at http://www.wncbees.org/referencedocs.cfm . This excellent guide shows typical blooming dates for honey nectar plants and seasons of special consideration by beekeepers. Many thanks to these dedicated beekeepers for assembling this great resource!

Don Hopkins in wax

One of the wax entries at the NCSBA was a wax figure of a mans head. No one seemed to notice the striking resemblance to Don Hopkins, until I made mention of it. Then Jack Hanel took the wax figure over next to Don and well, we all got a big laugh. I just had to pass it along.

NCSDA meeting

I had a great bee week during the week of the 4th of July. I started the week off by speaking at the monthly meeting of the Watauga County Beekeepers Chapter. I spoke to the group about non-chemical beekeeping and using natural comb. The talk was well received and I am pleased at the response I am getting about this program across the state. I have presented the program at Forsyth Co, Madison Co, Haywood Co, Burke Co, the NCSBA 2009 summer meeting and am scheduled to speak on it at the August Henderson Co and September Davie Co meetings. I am proud that Buncombe County has sort of taken a lead in going this direction in beekeeping.

After leaving Boone, I ended up in Asheboro NC, where I visited the NC Zoo. The reason for this visit was to see the Honeybee Garden that the NCSBA so strongly supports. My first impression was that the exhibit is nice, but not worth 1 million dollars. I actually stated, "this is a nice exhibit for about $100,000.00". I later learned the planned 1 million dollar exhibit was scaled down to $180,000.00. This made me feel much better about it. The exhibit is a very well done work that will draw the attention of the public and educate them about honeybees. Maybe it will spur them to find out more at our meetings.

I then headed to Salisbury for the 2010 summer NCSBA meeting. The meeting was actually in China Grove. I am proud to announce that I received the Master Beekeeper Medallion for Deb Roberts there. I also took the long put off written test to become a Master Beekeeper myself. The meeting produced one really great item. We voted to adopt a honey standard in NC and passed that on to the NC department of agriculture for tweaking prior to implementation. I am on the committee to oversee this process. Soon we will have legal recourse for those people that sell honey as sourwood honey when it is not and for those that do such things as mix corn syrup with their honey. I was also elected as a director for NCSBA and will join Steve in representing Western NC.

Hope to see you all at the meeting Monday August 2nd where I will hopefully be presenting Deb with her Master Beekeeper Medallion. At any rate, those of you who have never seen one of these medallions can see one first hand.