It’s hard to believe that by the time you read this the summer will be well on its way to being over!  The first of September marks the beginning of the school season and at least for me, that’s the signal that the season’s activities are ready to switch over to winter preparation.  Looking back at our short summer – they seem to get shorter as I get older – I realize that mite mitigation is slipping in my apiary.  I don’t know about you, but I always find myself trying to catch up on this.  Do you find Integrated Pest Management (IPM) sometimes confusing?
 
I do!  I’ve been doing quite a bit of research and will be glad to share my findings with you at this September’s meeting. I would have made this presentation earlier this summer, but we need an indoors location where the projector will work.  The Normand Bird Sanctuary has a hall that we can use.  I’ll review the information that Jim Lawson, our State’s apiary inspector, put out at Smith’s Nursery.  This time we’ll take it up a notch and cover the so-called soft chemical treatments such as Thymol and Formic Acid.  I’m hoping to move a couple of hives to the Sanctuary and actually apply the common treatments in a hands-on demonstration.  If I can pull it off, we’ll also do a mite count so I can go back at the end of September and see how well the treatments worked. I’ll report those results at the October Harvest Dinner meeting.  It goes against my natural practices grain, but I’ll also give the so-called hard chemicals honorable mention – just to cover all of the bases.
 
Please don’t miss this important end-of-summer-season meeting!  If you have a hive you are willing to have moved and treated give me a call.  I’ll pick it up and make sure you get it back at the end of September.  My cell phone is: (401) 374-4730 and you can also email me at: everett@beehavin.com.