I told you what took place at the Fall bee convention, but I didn’t say anything about the business part. Since I was there, some of my readers asked me to report on that. I am not much of a secretary or a writer, but I will try to walk through and drop some information.

The meeting was called to order on Thursday night after the informal cookout by President Laurence Cutts. We elected new officers. The new officers are: Reno Plenge – President; Rodger Twitchell – Vice-President; Bert Kelly – Treasurer. Malcolm Sanford was reappointed Executive Secretary.

Laurence Cutts presided over the meeting and passed the gavel to Reno Plenge at the end of the meeting.

Bert Kelly, Treasurer, reported that with all the honey monies from the three apiaries, monies taken in for this meeting, and the cost of this convention, as well as the money brought forward from the last meeting, the final figure in our coffers is $19,826 .

The report on the Florida Standard of Honey was given by Nancy Gentry who authored the written request. It has gone through all the hoops and is waiting for Charlie Bronson’s signature. It should be completed by the end of this year.

We tabled the committee’s report on the resolutions for bottling and selling honey by small sideliner beekeepers. The reason was that the Honey Standard was before the Florida State Legislation and was almost accepted when they got wind of the resolutions and thought we were trying to slip something by them so they stopped work on the Honey Standard. We feel that after the Honey Standard is approved, then we can continue with the resolutions. That is the only reason we did not ask for a report at this time. The next mid-year meeting in 2009, we will continue to work on the resolutions and present them to the legislators.

We are looking for someone to take charge of a state apiary to be located in North/Northwest Florida. That would give us apiaries from top to bottom of the state.

The board of Managers was called together right after the general meeting, Reno Plenge officiating. Nancy Gentry was asked to be the liaison officer between FSBA and the Florida Legislation concerning all Honey Bee matters. She accepted.

We need one member from each of the Associations in the state to help on the Board of Managers. It would help us to make better informed decisions for the State Association and ultimately the local associations.

There are two new associations located in: Calhoun County (Blountstown), Hardy County (Bowling Green), and maybe Tallahassee will be starting one soon.

This year I (Peaches) was selected to be on the Auditing Committee. My first time. There were three of us and we all checked and rechecked the financial statements and checkbook. All was in order for another year.

As I said before, you should come to the state meeting, you will learn something or at least meet new and old friends.