Well the snow predicted on the day of February's meeting never materialized, I sincerely hope everyone got the message in time.  We made the decision to cancel the day before the meeting in order to have time to get the word out. I realize many of our members have four wheel drive and have lived here long enough to be familiar with driving in adverse conditions, however not everyone is comfortable driving on snowy roads.  We wanted to put neither our speaker nor our members at risk.

Looking back at my March 2016 president's message I mentionedthen that the wild plums around town as well as some of my fruit trees were in full bloom. The past couple of years have certainly been different. As beekeepers we were spoiled by the mild winters of the drought years. It was easy to forget that the weather pattern this winter is much more typical for the foothills. We have to stay diligent and continue to monitor the weight of our colonies as between the cold and wet the bees may not get much flight time, and when they do get out there may not be much forage for them.

I'm hoping for the sake of the commercial beekeepers that we have some milder, dry weather when it's time to bring their bees home. It would be a nice break for the rest of us and our bees as well.

Jerry Van Heeringen