February 2020 Bee Cafe and Workshop.
Swarms Biology, and pulp trap building.

This months café is being hosted by:

Jessica Yau at her beautiful

Garden Valley Ranch.

498 Pepper Rd, Petaluma, CA 94952

Swarm Season is just around the corner. Perhaps you have noticed all the increased activity and volume of bees in your apiary recently.

Last year the first swarm of the season was reported in late February!

 Swarm Biology:

-What is a swarm

-What stimulates bees to swarm

-Swarm chart of Sonoma County

-How we create a bee sharing community

-Goals of honey bee colonies

-and much more

Christine will be building swarm traps with us!

We are requesting a $10.00 donation to cover the cost of supplies. We need to know as soon as possible if you are going to be building a swarm trap with us so we can get enough supplies.

The following articles provide detailed information and great photos on how and why bees swarm, and what to expect during the months after a new colony is created by a swarm:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1heFzaMBK6D7EIDM8bKwWdOQTV2TsQyLf/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JjM-tMPIOvPmSaU6VwmZ_o13dI5xZIPk/view?usp=sharing

We are including these links as educational material, we are not advocating the treatment options occasionally mentioned in the articles.

We also highly recommend Honeybee Democracy, by Thomas D. Seeley, which describes how honey bee swarms decide where to relocate, amazingly, by using fact-finding, debate and consensus-building.  This book is available to check out from the SCBA library.

Food: Please bring a snack to share, and your own mug if you plan to have coffee or tea.

Bee Cafés are a benefit provided for active SCBA members only. We are unable to include guests who are not currently registered Association members.