The Portland Metro Beekeepers Association is a beekeepers’ club in the Portland Metro area. Most members are hobby beekeepers who keep one to a dozen colonies of bees because they enjoy the activity and the honey. Some members are in the business of beekeeping, providing bees for pollination of crops and selling honey, beeswax, beekeeping equipment, and bees themselves. Some sell honey and beeswax from home or at farmers’ markets. We have members with lifetimes of beekeeping experience, and we have others just starting.
The association’s purposes are to provide educational opportunities in a social environment for the enhancement of beekeeping and train new beekeepers in the art of beekeeping. We also serve as a source of information about beekeeping, to encourage people to become beekeepers, and to provide a setting for members to enjoy the company of other beekeepers, exchange information, and help one another.
Our monthly meetings are friendly and informal, with just enough structure to include group discussion of a subject appropriate to the time of year. We occasionally invite an expert to speak on a bee-related topic, such as medicating colonies, preventing swarming, or the benefits of bee-sting therapy. At each meeting one or more members bring refreshments. The club maintains a library of materials on beekeeping.
Dues for membership in the Portland Beekeepers Association are $24 per year. Individual Youth memberships up to age 18 are at no cost to the young person. (We encourage members also to join the Oregon State Beekeepers Association (OSBA), which costs $20. OSBA membership includes the monthly Oregon beekeepers publication, “The Bee Line.”) As with any club, members are asked to volunteer to help with club functions, such as the club’s participation in the Clackamas County Fair, or the annual Field Day, or simply bringing refreshments from time to time.
The club welcomes new members, and we also welcome guests and visitors at our meetings. Come with a member, or just show up on your own. Join the club right away, or come as a visitor until you’re sure you want to.
The club meets on the second Thursday of each month, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM. Except August, when we have a picnic in local park the second Saturday of August. Call or email the President for details.
Take Hwy 213 off I-205 toward Molalla and turn left on
Beavercreek Rd. (Or, if you are going north on Hwy 213, turn right
on Beavercreek.) Go about one half mile and turn right into the
Clackamas Community College campus. Take the first left at Clairmont
Hall and park in the lot on the east side, or take the second left and
park on the west side of the building. (See the CCC Map at the link
below.) Use the last set of double doors near the south end of the
building.
Link to The CCC Map: http://www.clackamas.cc.or.us/documents/campusmap.pdf
