informed - Pawtuckaway Beekeepers` Association

New Hampshire Union Leader 09/04/2011
Copy Reduced to %d%% from original to fit letter page
New Hampshire
To kill or not:
No decision,
just reflection
on food source
TROUT AND BIRDS, We
are near the cusp of seasons.
Come October, you can hunt
for grouse and still have 15
days to cast a fly. To me,
there is nothing quite like
heading for camp with a fly
rod in one hand, a shotgun
in the other.
Of course they are both
“consumptive” passions, a
term I have come to loath.
Who does not “consume,”
whatever they do? The store?
Car? Gas? Road food? Lodging? Cameras? Electricity?
On the way down the hill
Wednesday, I saw a partridge pecking at gravel on
the side of the road. It was
681'$<1(:6
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September 4, 2011 • Page B1
They weathered their honeymoon
Delayed by storm: Newlyweds, both PSNH
employees, opted to postpone their honeymoon so they
could help restore power to customers after Irene passed
through New England.
By MICHAEL COUSINEAU
New Hampshire Sunday News
Electricity filled the air for
the wedding of Lisa Arrington
and Kevin Duval last weekend, packed with dozens of coworkers from Public Service of
New Hampshire.
Rather than head off on their
honeymoon hours later, how-
ever, the newlyweds joined
their colleagues in helping restore power knocked out by
Tropical Storm Irene starting
last Sunday.
“In this business, we’re used
to postponing important days,”
Duval said last week from Connecticut, where she and her
new husband were helping
crews there restore electricity.
Last April, the couple picked
their wedding date — Saturday, Aug. 27 — not knowing
they’d cross paths with a major
storm. The Wednesday before
the wedding, the pair decided
to volunteer for duty rather
than camp in the North Country on their honeymoon.
“We didn’t want to put (our
bosses) in a position where
they would have forced us,” she
said.
Hurricane Irene prevented
some relatives from Virginia
and Cape Cod from making the
wedding, and then rain forced
the ceremony inside The Granite Rose in Hampstead.
“We were nervous we were
all going to get called in (to
work on the wedding night),”
said photographer Mandy
Soucy, a PSNH customer service representative.
The bride’s sister, Katie Aquino, a PSNH customer service
representative, said guests focused on the festivities.
“There really wasn’t a lot of
talk about the storm,” Aquino
said. “It really was celebrating
the wedding.”
+See Honeymoon, Page B5
PSNH workers Lisa Arrington
and Kevin Duval spent their
honeymoon repairing lines
downed by Hurricane Irene in
Connecticut.
COURTESY
7+,6&283/(+$6+,9(6
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+DUULJDQ
Woods, Water
& Wildlife
this spring’s chick, almost
grown. Window down, I said
“What are you doing, bird?”
and it strutted off into the
woods. In there, under the
low limbs, I spotted two or
three others, a former brood,
now a flock destined to disperse at some subtle signal
of season in late September.
Making note of the spot,
I drove on, thinking about
roasted partridge for supper
30 days hence, stuffed with
wild apple and bread and
onion and wrapped in foil
with thyme and a pat of butter. To me this is vastly preferable to industrial chicken,
and not just because it’s
wild, sustainable and homegrown. It’s just plain great
to eat.
Ditto a trout from the
pond near camp, where the
never-dammed or altered
water harbors an ancient
native strain to augment
the couple of thousand
hatchery fingerlings stocked
via helicopter every other
spring or so (depending on
weather). These are bright,
little and not-so-little brookies, black-backed and silver
sides riddled with beautifully colored spots. Most I let
go to fight another day, but
if one is injured or someone
wants one for breakfast, into
the basket, neck snapped,
it goes.
Some people have
trouble with this. There
is a soul-searching piece
in this quarter’s Northern
Woodlands magazine (a
publication I highly recommend) in which the editor
takes a friend’s kid fishing,
asks whether he wants the
first-caught fish let go or
kept, hears the definite yell
“Keep it,” snaps its neck, and
is confronted by a tearful kid
and an angry Mom upon
reaching shore. “You’ve
created a vegetarian,” she
scolds.
Wow. We have come to
this. No matter what you
think, the catching and playing are no fun for the fish,
for which it is a life or death
struggle. Neither are the
surprise, flush and stalk any
fun for the partridge, which
sees a hunter as just another
predator, to be evaded, all
in a day’s work. Yet both are
good to eat.
My longtime dog-sledding
friend Ginger Jannenga
often weighs in whenever
this subject comes up. If you
fish, she always says, why
not eat? All of the other food
gatherers do.
You do what you do
decide to do, sustainably,
within the bounds of Mother
Nature’s dictum. There is
no right or wrong in this
matter of inherited and
cultural perception, just ever
increasing vitriol.
John Harrigan’s column appears
weekly. His address is Box 39, Colebrook
03576. Email him at hooligan@ncia.net.
Bees are crucial to the nation’s food supply and, in fact, a third of the supply is directly related to pollination by
honeybees, Dorinda Priebe said.
GRETYL
Dorinda and David Priebe sell honey produced by
honeybees in their own back yard, but only as an aside
to studying the science of bees and bee management.
GRETYL MACALASTER
BEE
informed
Buzzing knowledge: Couple is
two of only four people in the state
who are certified master beekeepers.
They are using that knowledge to
produce better, stronger bees.
By GRETYL MACALASTER
Sunday News Correspondent
RAYMOND
orinda Priebe’s fascination
with bees began as a young
girl watching her grandfather with his hives at his
Loudon farm.
“I would go into the barn
where he kept bees and be
absolutely fascinated,” she
said. “From that time, I always wanted
D
bees of my own.” But it would be many
years before that dream became a reality.
Her desire to learn everything she
could about the honeybee also intrigued
David, her husband of 33 years. In July, the
couple became two of only four people in
the state designated as certified “master
beekeepers” by the Eastern Apicultural
Society.
Earning that title involved a lengthy
four-part exam and more than two years
of study.
David Priebe said their goal was to pass
the rigorous test so they could be a reliable
source of honeybee-keeping information
for themselves and others.
In the “bee yard” of their Raymond
home, the Priebes are running an experiment on how to manage sustainable
honeybee colonies.
Dorinda Priebe studies a frame of bees from a colony recently attacked by a
bear. It is one of several colonies Priebe and her husband, David, have in their
back yard and are studying in an effort to help sustain the honeybee.
GRETYL MACALASTER
+See Bees, Page B6
How to speak fluent forestry
LIKE MANY professions, forestry has develBasal Area
a) The section of your garden devoted to
oped over time its own specific vocabulary.
herbs;
Even forest management has a fancy name
b) A chronic sinus condi— silviculture — that doesn’t
tion;
have anything to do with
c) How foresters estimate
mining for precious metals.
the overall quantity of trees/
For the uninitiated, listening
wood in a given place. It’s the
to a forester talk about what’s
square-footage of a crossgoing on in the woods can
section (at chest-height) of all
be bewildering. But in New
-DFN6DYDJH
trees on an acre. Easy, right?
Hampshire, where we take
Disturbance
pride in being the seconda) The noise a chain saw
most forested state in the
makes;
country, we ought to all have
b) The noise the neighbors
a solid understanding of
Foresters hope to use “disturbance,” and perhaps “scarification,” to
basic forestry lingo. Take the quiz below to test
+See Journal, Page B6 foster “regeneration” — such as the young pines growing in the
your knowledge of forestry terms. The correct
foreground in this working forest in Grafton.
JACK SAVAGE
answers are below.
Copyright © 2011 Union Leader Corporation. All rights reserved. $$edition
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New Hampshire Union Leader 09/04/2011
Copy Reduced to %d%% from original to fit letter page
1HZ+DPSVKLUH
Page B6 • NEW HAMPSHIRE SUNDAY NEWS • September 4, 2011
Bees
Continued from Page B1
They describe the personalities of each of their colonies,
where they came from, their
genetic makeup, how they
have survived things like bear
attacks, parasites and good old
New England weather.
As she talked about the different boxes of bees lining the
yard, Dorinda Priebe prepared
a “smoker” to ward off defender bees as she approached
a hive for its regular checkup.
“We take the pulse of each
individual colony, understand what its needs are and
respond,” she said.
Wearing a bright white bee
suit with a full facemask, she
pried each frame from its box
and examined it closely.
This colony had recently
been attacked by a bear in a
different yard, and the Priebes
were called in to help save it.
As Dorinda Priebe examined,
hundreds of bees worked diligently to repair the damaged
sections of comb as the Queen
Bee, a distinctly different color,
checked on her “brood,” her
employees and her hive.
As she worked, Priebe
explained the caste system,
lifecycle and peculiar habits of
bees, as well as their impor-
tance economically, agriculturally and environmentally.
Bees are crucial to the nation’s food supply and, in fact,
a third of the supply is directly
related to pollination by honeybees, she said.
The Priebes have farmed
organically for years, but saw
less-than-stellar results before
introducing the natural pollinators to the yard.
She said they have apple
trees that did not produce
anything until after they introduced honeybees.
Gradually, things started to
improve and they are preparing for their best apple crop yet
this fall.
David Priebe said pollinators in general are at risk and
honeybees are no exception.
In the last few years, the average colony loss has been 30
percent, which he said is not a
sustainable amount.
It is something the scientific
community is studying from
many angles, but there are
four primary reasons — pesticides, poor nutrition, parasites
and pathogens.
A parasite known as the
varroa destructor is the main
source of colony maladies.
Varroa feeds on honeybee
blood, which weakens the
bees and makes them less
disease-resistant.
“When we first started beekeeping here, we wanted just a
couple of hives, and the varroa
made us realize we didn’t
know enough even with the
classes we had been taking,”
Dorinda Priebe said.
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The Priebes have farmed organically for
years, but saw less than stellar results before
introducing the natural pollinators to the yard.
She said they have apple trees that did not
produce anything until after they introduced
honeybees.
began, and for two years the
Priebes learned everything
they could about honeybees.
“The biology was so fantastic. It began to explain to me
what I was lacking in my own
bee management,” Dorinda
Priebe said.
The purpose of the master
beekeeper certification program is to identify and certify
people who have a detailed
knowledge of honeybee biology, expertise in the proper
practices of beekeeping and
who can present information to the beekeeping and
non-beekeeping public in a
detailed, accurate, clear and
authoritative manner. Those
awarded certificates are
competent at a college level in
the four areas where they are
tested.
The Priebes are using that
knowledge to help create their
own sustainable colonies
while looking for ways to educate others.
The couple does sell honey
produced in their hives, as well
as lip balm and hand cream
made from the beeswax, but
only as an aside to the real
work of studying bees.
“We use the honey to generate conversation,” Dorinda
Priebe said.
As wind rolled into the area
on a recent weekend, bees
began flying into the Priebes
yard from all over, back to
the safety of their hives as the
couple peacefully watched the
ever-important insects whiz
by.
“There is an art and a beauty
to it that touches people in
ways they don’t even understand,” David Priebe said.
“There is such a rhythm and a
seasonality to bees.”
“It is a fascinating and
addicting science,” Dorinda
Priebe said.
“This is a lifelong thing.”
For more information about
the master beekeeping program, go to easternapiculture.
org.
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Dorinda Priebe and her husband, David, were recently certified
as “master beekeepers” by the Eastern Apicultural Society, after
taking a rigorous exam, and are using the knowledge to develop
sustainable colonies in their own “beeyards” and to educate others
about the ever-important insect.
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Continued from Page B1
make when the chainsaw
starts;
c) Any event that changes
the forest, planned or unplanned, such as fire, high
winds or timber harvesting.
Duff or Duff layer
a) The layer of beer cans
surrounding Homer Simpson’s bar stool;
b) An overly large divot
taken by a particularly incompetent golfer;
c) Decomposing organic
matter on the forest floor.
Fuel load
a) How much diesel is left in
the skidder;
b) Twice as much as a halfload;
c) The amount of burnable
wood in an area that may be at
risk of fire in a forest.
Scarification
a) What happens at Halloween;
b) The result of skinning
your knee when you fall off
your bicycle;
c) Loosening or breaking up
the topsoil to promote regeneration in the forest.
Supercanopy
a) Superman’s parachute,
used in case he runs into kryptonite while flying;
b) An especially delicious
appetizer;
c) Super dominant trees
whose crowns (tops) protrude
above the main forest canopy.
Regeneration
a) How you keep your beer
cold in the woods;
b) How you keep the lights
on during a hurricane;
c) New growth of trees.
Slash
a) What legislators do to
government budgets;
b) A rock star;
c) Branches, dead trees and
other woody debris left on the
ground to recharge the soil
and provide habitat after a
logging operation.
Snag
a) When a forester grabs the
last piece of pie at Thanksgiving;
b) What happens when you
tear your new pants while
bushwacking through the
woods;
c) A dead tree left standing
for wildlife.
Answers: the correct answer
to each is (c)
Jack Savage is the editor of Forest Notes,
the quarterly magazine of the Society for
the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
He can be reached at jsavage@forestsociety.org.
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B6
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