Prairie State Beekeepers Meeting - June 5, 2025
The June 5, 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 June 5, 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).
- Link to Steamship Bee Company for Spring Splits and Overwintered nucs
- Discussing Swarming and looking for queen cells
- Possibly splitting colonies and reasons for the splits
- Looking for brood and eggs
- When to add honey supers
- June summer outing at LLCC
- Availability and pricing of wooden ware (deep hive bodies, honey supers) - Dave Tebrugge
- Topics of interest such as the discussion and Q&A in the meeting indicate.
Items to check in May/June
- The early Spring flowers should be emerging soon. Different varieties of trees will be blooming now and through April and into May (Maples, Elm, Willow, Witch Hazel, Alder, Black Locus, etc). The fruit and nut trees begin in April and May along with many other trees). Check out the Pollen Sources by time of year towards the end of this bullet list.
- Decide what you are going to do with overwintered colonies in April (i.e. nothing, create a split or let swarm, or manually re-queen).
- Get honey supers and extra deep brood boxes to deploy for strong overwintered colonies
- Get Swarm Traps deployed
- In June, consider re-queening overwintered colonies and this year packages (will discuss why at meeting)
- 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 Athens, IL 217.691.2223 [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] |