112 people attended the VBA's online winter meeting Saturday where President Andrew Munkres reported on our upcoming honey promotion campaign funded by an $80,000 federal block grant (detailed information to come in a future Update).
In a brief business meeting the membership approved a request by the Board of Directors asking for authorization to make periodic partial payments to the media contractor doing work under the federal honey promotion block grant up to an amount of $35,000 in any one payment with aggregate total payments to the contractor NTE $70,000 and with 100% of these periodic payments to be reimbursed back to the VBA by the Federal Block Grant.(Emphasis added.)
The membership also met, and heard from Steve Dwinell, the VAAFM's new Director of the Public Health and Agricultural Resource Management Divsion.
The 2023 VBA winter meeting featured two well-known speakers:
Dr. Scott McArt from the Dyce Lab at Cornell talked about pesticides affecting honey bees and his work on pesticide legislation in New York.
Randy Oliver discussed his work on oxalic acid extended release as well as some of his very recent research which can be reviewed at scientificbeekeeping.com.
This entire Zoom meeting (3 1/2 hours) was recorded. Current VBA members may watch the meeting by visiting the VBA website and looking under the Calendar menu for Past Workshop & Events Recordings. Minutes from the meeting are available here. (In both cases login required.)