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PCBA General Meeting Minutes, March 2023

Pierce County Beekeepers Association General Meeting Minutes from Monday, Mar 6, 2023

Meeting time: 7:06 pm to 8:12 pm

 

Mary Dempsey (Club President) Called the meeting to order at 7:06 pm

 

Kathleen Clerc (Club Vice-President) was assisting people who wanted to sign up for the Beekeeping 101 class, pay membership dues, and purchase books.

 

Mary welcomed everybody to the meeting and introduced herself with a quick introduction.

 

Mary spoke about the following topics:

 

New Business:

  • The next PCBA Board Meeting will be held on Thursday, March 30th at 6 pm. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend. Contact Mary if you would like to attend.

  • Apiary: The whole apiary is dead. So new bees have been purchased. The two Nucs will arrive the first weekend of April. The two packages will arrive either the 16th or 17th of April. We will hopefully have an apiary day for installing the bees, but that is contingent based upon how busy we are with the Spring Fair.

  • The Sugar sale based on the eight hundred pound donation from the Brown & Hayley (Almond Roca) factory and the Apiary clean up day were both a success.

  • The Spring Fair is coming up. The dates are the 13th - 16th & 20th - 23rd of April. There will soon be a volunteer sign up on the website. All are encouraged to volunteer!

  • The club will have booths at both the Master Gardener Plant sale ( the last weekend of April ) and the Tacoma Sustainability Expo. Katie Marler is in charge of these projects. Volunteers are needed here too. Katie says please feel free to volunteer and educate the community and hang out with her for the day.

 

Continuing Business:

  • The board is still seeking volunteers to fill positions on the board. Our treasurer, Sherri, has graciously served for seven or eight years. She would like to retire. We still need a treasurer, and other vacant positions such as Member Services, Fundraising, and Apiary.

  • The club would like to instate a membership auto renewal that would automatically renew the memberships automatically on the same month that the membership was purchased, thus charging the card on file. There would be an option to opt out of this auto renewal. There will be a member vote on it next month.

  • We have access to another area on the WSU extension campus for raising queens.

  • The club is looking for donations for the auction fundraiser that will take place at our May meeting. Please consider donating for the fundraiser. These funds help the club fund outreach and entertainment. Someone asked if the donation has to be ‘bee related’ and the answer is no- they don't have to be related to bees. Any donations that you think would be appropriate are welcome. There will also be a dessert potluck, feel free to bake or purchase something to share.

 

Questions & Answers:

  • It was asked if there was a way or a plan to have a list of people by specific areas so members could see who was local to them and get to know their club neighbors. Kathleen Clerc answered, that was the purpose of Community Clusters at meetings so people can gather by area and introduce themselves and get to know one another. She also shared that Katie Marler had an idea they hope to implement where there are Community Captains according to areas so people can meet or have support in their own local area. So if anybody is interested in being a community captain, please talk to Katie or Kathleen. We can hold a vote on this if enough people are interested.

 

Swarm List:

  • Mary said that by next Monday she hopes to have a Swarm List sign up on the website. She said it is a sign up by email. She will then email you a SurveyMonkey that will ask specific questions about being on the call list. Such as, phone number, availability, how far you are willing to travel, are you willing to be on a ladder, etc. Once that is returned to her she will add the person to the Swarm List. Due to the immediate nature of the call she stated it works on a first come, first served basis.

 

  • UPDATE: There is a direct link to the Survey Monkey questionnaire on the Swarm page on the website. Click on the link, fill out the survey and you will be added to the Swarm list.

 

Tonight’s Lesson Topic: To Swarm or Not to Swarm

Given by : Greg Willging & Mary Dempsey

 

Meeting adjourned at 8:12 pm.

Hospitality by Jeannie Archie

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