Fontenelle Bee Club
Fontenelle Bee Club
Notification area: Please check here before coming to the weekly Saturday meeting at 1 to 3 p.m. Any information or schedule changes will be posted here. The meeting day and time can change as of each Saturday up until Noon due to weather or other interruptions.
Saturday, August 21st: Meeting at 1 to 3 p.m. as planned.
Please use mosquito repellent before arriving to the bee yard. The mosquitoes are really heavy at this time.
Welcome to the bee club. There are a number of good reasons for joining the Fontenelle Bee Club and help us to grow our group of bee folk.
Bee Club members get the benefit of regular, face to face interaction with other local bee people to share stories, ask for help, offer assistance and generally be a fun and helpful bee folk community.
Not only that, bee club members can get hands on experience as volunteers helping to work with the bees in the BBE–tech bee yard. for people who are wanting to get some hands on practice before getting their own bees or perhaps they don’t have the space or resources to keep bees on their own, this is a great opportunity to get involved and active with working with bees.
Yet another benefit of membership is free bees. That’s right. When we get swarm calls or do splits in the conservation beeyard, active members and volunteers can get informed of swarms that neeed to be collected or splits they can take to their own beeyard for free.
On top of all that, our club members get to help present information and do information tables at various Fontenelle Forest activities to inform patrons and members of the public to the issues honey bees face and the fun and experience working with bees can provide.
Because of the nature of liability and monitoring activity on Fontenelle Forest property, we require all Fontenelle Bee Club members fill out and turn in a membership form and waiver.
Bee club members will receive email notices on upcoming activities and events regularly to help keep everyone ‘in the loop”.
All Fontenelle Be Club members are also automatically members of the online “Rebel Bee Club” Which brings together people from all around the country to support each other and have fun all in our own ways as we work with the bees.
One of the projects the club will be working on is the Feral Bee Observation Project in which our members take regular walks through the forest trails looking for and observing the health and activity of feral bees throughout the forest.
Also, toward the end of the year, after the bees begin their winter ‘nap’ we will have a big pot luck dinner to have fun and celebrate all the things we learned and did over the year.
Each member is responsible for their own protective clothing and equipment such as a smoker (we are working to have some extra equipment available for those who don’t have their own yet).
Clothing for working with bees can be as basic as coveralls and heavy windbreaker from a second hand store to specialty bee supplier bought bee suits.
We are not charging for participation at this time, but we welcome and encourage members to donate commonly used items or money to procure these items if they are able to. These items are:
- Dry, granulated table sugar. We can’t get enough of this.
- Helmets/veils or other types of headgear
- Smokers
- Hives- We will be glad to accept never used equipment and look at used equipment
- Wood- we use 1″x4″, 1″x8″ and 1″x12″ boards to build hives that are used in the bee yard.
BBE-Tech Apiary is working hard to provide links to downloads of PDF format books and educational materials for free to community members. All of which can be found on our Recommendations page. Beekeepers should always be on the lookout to purchase or otherwise read as much bee related material as is possible. Public libraries are a good source of information as well.
Tools Available to Apiary members:
As the apiary grows and more people work with us and the bees, we will be offering new tools to help our volunteers stay on the same page and know more about what we are working on.
We will be providing PDF forms that can be filled out and emailed to us or printed out and turned in. These forms are ( will be):
Hive Inspection Form – This PDF form enables all BBE-Tech bee handlers to do consistent reporting and documentation of the condition of the colonies and hives we work with. Space management inspections are done about every two weeks and full inspections are conducted once in Spring and once in Fall.
Hive Observation Form – This PDF form is the accompanying form to the inspection report. it is to be used with full inspections and at times when no inspection is planned for a hive. Observations are conducted for every colony/hive on a weekly basis.
Bee ID Sheet – This PDF sheet can be viewed on your computer or printed out and used as a guide to help bee handlers to identify different races of honey bees as well as other types of bees that are frequently reported to beekeepers throughout the year.
Bee Inspection ID Sheet – This sheet PDF sheet can be viewed on your computer or printed out and used as a guide to help bee handlers identify symptoms and examples of bee diseases and pests. This can help bee handlers to do better hive inspections.
