There is no regularly scheduled meeting for January, but there will be a Board of Directors meeting on January 17, 2010. If you have a nomination for the slate of officers please call Fred Munzer, chairman of the nominating committee. The committee will prepare the slate to present to the membership at the February meeting for the election of the new officers.  Fred’s number is 631-243-3512.

Happy New Years everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. We certainly started it off with a great celebration of our 60th Anniversary of the LIBC at our Holiday Party. Over 50 members attended, decked out with wonderful bee regalia. The guys had bee ties, the gals had bee jewelry, bee sweaters, even a pair of bee antennae! As always we enjoyed eating and talking and sharing the grab bag gifts. We had some lovely door prizes that were generously donated by the bee vendors. We would like to thank them for the their thoughtfulness: The National Honey Board, Bee Swap, Walter Kelley Co. Wicwas Press, Mann Lake, Brushy Mountain, Blue Sky, Bee Craft, Reids, and Maxant.

I’d also like to thank Anna Bischoff for planning and Ray and Ginny Lackey for helping lead us in a spirited rendition of the Twelve Days of Beekeeping. That was really fun, and ever since I can’t help humming “Six queens-a-swarming”!

Everyone seemed to enjoy the photo slide presentation of old photos. I am sending them to George Schramm as well as the ones from the party and hopefully he will be able to put them up on the website. Thanks Greta for being our official photographer for the party. Thanks too, to Eleanor and Pete for helping with the grab bagging and raffle tickets. We had two wonderful raffle items donated, thanks to Arthur Nelson and Anna Bischoff.

And now the most exciting part of all from the party. I am so grateful for being honored by being named Beekeeper of the Year. As I told those of you at the party, this started out as my husband Clifford’s hobby, and little by little he drew me in. First he needed help extracting and bottling the honey. Then I might as well make candles with the wax. And then just give him a hand holding a frame of bees, and then there I was, in the midst of it, and coming to meetings and making all new friends. And how all of you have reached out to us and helped when Clifford had his heart surgery, and then my breast cancer treatment. And when I lost Clifford you all were there to support me and help me with my bees just being my friends and family. So Thank You again for this honor, I hope to continue to serve the club as best I can.




Max Riedener with his great bee tie!


Our 60th Anniversary Cake. Delicious!


Jutta Mariotti was definitely the Queen Bee!


Ginny and Ray conducting Anna’s version of the “Twelve Days of Beekeeping”