Prairie State Beekeepers Summer Outing - June 14, 2025
Prairie State Beekeepers will have a Summer Outing on June 14 at Lincoln Land Community College Kreher Agricultural Center and the West Nature Grove Apiary. See All details on Summary of Events Page
Prairie State Beekeepers Meeting - July 3, 2025
The July 3, 2025, Prairie State Beekeepers meeting will be at the Sangamon County Farm Bureau Building. Start time is 7 PM.
A map to the location of the Farm Bureau Building can be found on the Summary of Events Page.
A zoom link for the meeting will be sent to all members via the Google Group forum for those who cannot attend the meeting in person. If you are a member and did not get the meeting email notice, contact Michael Mitchell at [email protected]
The July 3, 2025, Prairie State Beekeepers meeting will be at the Sangamon County Farm Bureau Building. Start time is 7 PM.
A map to the location of the Farm Bureau Building can be found on the Summary of Events Page.
A zoom link for the meeting will be sent to all members via the Google Group forum for those who cannot attend the meeting in person. If you are a member and did not get the meeting email notice, contact Michael Mitchell at [email protected]
Tentative Agenda
- Business items to attend to (max time is 15 minutes).
- Discussing Swarming and looking for queen cells
- Possibly splitting colonies and reasons for the splits
- Looking for brood and eggs
- Availability and pricing of wooden ware (deep hive bodies, honey supers) - Dave Tebrugge
- PSBA has manual extractors to loan to members to extract honey - contact Rich Ramsey at 217.691.9354
[email protected] to schedule the pickup and use of an extractor. Please clean the extractor before you return in or pass on to the next member to use. Any questions on how to clean or use, talk with Rich. - Topics of interest such as the discussion and Q&A in the meeting indicate.
Items to check in June/July
- Get honey supers and extra deep brood boxes to deploy for strong colonies
- In June, consider re-queening overwintered colonies and this year packages
- Consider doing splits
- Varroa mite treatments
- SHB traps
- Wondering where the bees are finding the pollen they are bringing in? Check the pollen sources by time of year on the documents page of our website.
- NASA has also produced an online map of honey bee forage sources by region
There have been some reported issues concerning the PSBA Google Group forum with members who have non Gmail based email addresses. Some but not all Yahoo and Outlook based email addresses have encountered the problem.
A few have been unexplainably removed from the group by Google. When we try to add the non Gmail based email address to the group, an error message states, the person cannot be directly added to the group, but must be invited.
If you have not been receiving the monthly zoom invites via the google group or have not seen any google group emails for a month, then...
A few have been unexplainably removed from the group by Google. When we try to add the non Gmail based email address to the group, an error message states, the person cannot be directly added to the group, but must be invited.
If you have not been receiving the monthly zoom invites via the google group or have not seen any google group emails for a month, then...
- Check your spam/junk folder and tell your email client the email from the PSBA group is not spam. We have noticed even Gmail will occasionally mark the PSBA google group emails as spam.
- Try to add yourself back to the PSBA Google group. Go to the Google Group tab of the PSBA website and click the blue icon.
- If you are already a PSBA Google group member it should take you to the group. If you are not already a PSBA Google Group member, it should allow you to be requested to be added to the group. Be sure to use your name and email address you used to join PSBA.
- If you accidentally click on the link and unsubscribe yourself from the PSBA Google group you can use the above stated procedure to get yourself added back to the group.
- If the email address does not appear on the PSBA membership list, the add request will not be approved. See the below screenshot of the Google Group page tab.
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2025 PSBA Membership dues:
The membership application/renewal form can be found on the Documents page tab of the website. Bring it to the next meeting you can attend. Give your membership renewal or new membership form and payment to the Treasurer. The Treasurer will notify the Membership Secretary to renew the member for Prairie State and to advise the ISBA of the renewal. New member applications will be reviewed by the officers before the membership is approved. You can mail in your renewal to Ben Reynolds (Treasurer). His contact information is below so you can email or call him to obtain his mailing address. The mailing address is also posted on the Prairie State Google Group. |
Our thanks to Jefferies Orchard
for their continued support of Prairie State Beekeepers 
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Your membership entitles you to a discounted subscription rate for the American Bee Journal magazine. Bee Culture is also an excellent publication, but it does not offer a discounted subscription.
Contact Information & Officers:
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Prairie State Beekeeping Presentation Committee Chairperson & Apparel Committee Chairperson
Melissa Gerard 447.910.6500 [email protected] |
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ISBA Vice President
Steve Petrilli Mechanicsburg, IL 217.638.7891 [email protected] |
ISBA Legislative Liaison
Rich Ramsey Rochester, IL 217.691.9354 [email protected] |
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Vertical Divider
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Local Commercial Beekeeper - Honey & Queen Producer
Steamship Bee Company Andy O'Connell Springfield, IL 217.299.4892 [email protected] |