Sunday, Feb 13 at 2:00 PM

Rocky Hill Grange

1340 South County Trail (Rte 2)

East Greenwich, RI

The speaker at the February meeting will be Jim Parr, a long-time and highly-respected Rhode Island beekeeper, whose topic will be "Feeding Honey Bees." His main focus will be on winter feeding, and among the things he will address will be the advantages and disadvantages of different types of feeders; the problems of using liquid feeders in winter; the benefits of candy feeding; the relative merits of using protein in candy versus pollen patties for early brood rearing; how to make and use pollen patties; and problems with early colony buildup.

Jim Parr began keeping bees when he was twelve years old (as a teenager he had sixteen hives) and in the 1980s kept up to 250 hives in 25 different bee yards in Newport County, Washington County and in Bristol County, Massachusetts.  For five years he provided up to 170 colonies a year to a 90-acre cranberry bog in Coventry.  He also traveled to New Zealand in 1984 and worked for two commercial beekeepers, one of them a 3,000-colony operation in the central highlands of South Island, where he was in charge of the extracting operation.  For many years he produced approximately 100 nucs annually.  He he also has taught hands-on beekeeping courses in conjunction with the Rhode Island Audubon Society.

Directions:

Take I-95 North or South to Exit 8

Make a right onto Rt-2 (Quaker Lane)

Go through the traffic lights at Division St., keeping the Walgreens to your left

The Grange is located just past the Walgreens on Rt-2