Beekeeper Donna McNicholas from Holton, Kansas spoke to us about her 22 years of experience raising bees and harvesting their honey. When not tending her bees, Donna grows many, many vegetables in her one acre garden and two greenhouses, and numerous fruit and flowers which she sells every Saturday at the Holton's Farmers Market.

A bee hive is constructed of two or three boxes with nine frames in each box where the bees deposit the honey. Twenty-thousand bees are needed to start a new hive. There is one queen bee for each hive. The female bees are called worker bees and the male bees are called drones.

Deb Spencer from Water's Edge gave a very interesting and informative presentation on bio-filters at the March 19, 2014 meeting of TAWGS. Mechanical filters help protect the pumps in our ponds and collect and remove debris. But the main purpose is to get rid of the things we don't see, ammonia and other sediments to keep our fish healthy. You cannot have a filter that is too big.

The different parts of the filters were shown and discussed. There is the tank where the water enters the bottom and flows up through poly filter mats, media bags containing bio-balls or lava rocks, through the top screens, over the top, into your pond. The top screens can be camouflaged with plants which will also help filter the water.

Deb also demonstrated and discussed the different media materials used in filtration systems based on their ability to clean by specific surface area (or ssa) per cubic foot. The higher the ssa, the higher the filtration. Pea gravel has a 72 ssa, lava rock 86, bio balls 120, bio ribbon 160, poly-flow 290.

She also gave us information about gravel bog and pottery bog filtration. To have a successful filtration system it requires these things: right temperatures, oxygen, food source, surface area and carbon.

Calling orioles "little pigs," Melody Weller, Wild Bird House, said that there will be a lot of them at first in the spring and then they will spread out over a larger feeding area later. Orioles love nectar, jelly, worms and oranges. Melody said they go through 14 - 18 jars of grape jelly a year in their backyard. She said orioles are a fun bird and have a beautiful song, so are worth trying to get them to your back yard.

You can make their nectar, just like the hummingbird nectar, only oriole nectar is usually three parts water to one part sugar, instead of 4/1 for hummingbirds. Bring to a boil and let cool before putting the nectar in the feeders.

Scott Marsh, Weed Specialist for the KS Dept of Ag, presented to the membership information about noxious weeds: what are they, how they spread, and preventative measures.

He began his presentation with a definition of weeds and their typical characteristics. Characteristics: Mature early, profuse seed production, roots or rhizomes with large food reserves, high photosynthetic rates and long seed dormancy. How does it spread: Natural movements, humans and anthropogenic movements.