George Imirie's PINK PAGES
1999

Report on 1999 EAS Meeting in Tennessee

It was a fine meeting, held on a beautiful old (1819) Presbyterian college campus with fine buildings, lots of trees, and easy to get from place to place.

I am always "taken" by the excellence of the 2 and half day Short Course, always using presenters (teachers) of national status in bee knowledge and aided by high quality EAS Master Beekeepers. There were even 40 colonies of bees brought in from the University of Tennessee for the teachers to use in demonstrating management techniques. Queen Breeder Sue Cobey, helped by Master Beekeeper Bob Cole, showed a part of a queen rearing procedure that included dumping TWO 3 pound packages of bees in one 10 frame Illinois Super, and Sue complained that she preferred ANOTHER 6 pounds in that same one super. You can really learn by watching these professionals work, and so rapidly, handling the bees as if they were grains of corn, and get NO STINGS. As usual the Short Course was divided into two separate groups, the novices and the advanced. Each group had about 40-45 members plus an array of instructors.

There were many subjects covered in the 5 days, including the proper use of apistan and coumaphos, the treatment for the new small hive beetle which we will probably get in Maryland, queen problems, and just lots of honey bee subjects.

My interest is always aroused by who I know that takes the Master Beekeeper 3 part tests and who becomes Certified. Thirteen people were candidates this year, some trying for the second or third time, and just 5 passed. One of the 5 was Baltimore's Bob Crouse, known as a comb honey producer and a nice guy, and it was Bob who GAVE me the official Maryland Beekeepers License Plate for my electric scooter which EVERY EAS member saw as I roamed the campus from place to place.

Our Master Beekeeper Dave Bernard was in "full bloom", as a short course instructor, a conference speaker, and an attendee at EVERYTHING. Dave is next year's EAS President for the Year 2000 Maryland Meeting, July 31-August 4 (write those dates down), and I could tell that he was "sizing up" the things that the attendees liked the most to make sure that those things are on the Maryland program, as well as avoiding those things that people did not like.

EAS had a bus tour of Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Thursday afternoon; and since I was sent there by the Army to work in 1944 in purifying enriched uranium and plutonium for our atomic bombs, I JUST HAD TO TAKE THE BUS to see my old "stomping grounds" of 55 years ago and "WOW, IT HAS SURE CHANGED"

Our MCBA was well represented by Master Beekeepers Barry Thompson, Bill Miller, Ann Harman, Dave Bernard, and myself, plus we had a new member, Jody Garbe who "did it all". State of Maryland attendees were Inspector Bart Smith, Master Beekeepers Bill and Nancy Troup, Bill Evans, and our newest, Bob Crouse.

EVERYBODY START MAKING THEIR PLANS TO LEARN (and maybe to teach) at EAS 2000 in Salisbury, Maryland next July 31- August 4. The kids can go to Ocean City or the Chesapeake Bay for fun while we have fun with bees and nice beekeepers.

George Imirie
Certified EAS Master Beekeeper