January 21, 2019
Five Rivers Bee Club 2019 Yearly Officer Meeting
In attendance: Vernon Lamb (President), Arrie
Goodwin (Vice President), Jacque English (Secretary / Treasurer), and Carmen
Inman (Member-at-Large)
We met at the Pill Box Cafe in Highland, AR at
Noon to discuss this year's (2019) direction for the club.
Vernon opened meeting with a prayer.
Topics Discussed:
1) Place for Meetings:
We all agree that
we are out growing our present location (Patio Lino)
in Ash Flat. We talked about our options
and decided that at the next meeting (February 2019) we will ask the members to
vote on a place that serves food or just a place to hold and have meeting. Once that is decided, that will give us the
direction and path we take next.
If they vote Serve
Food, then our next option is limited, since we have very few places in our
area that can accommodate our membership size.
Artisan has the room and the available time slot, but they do add a 20%
gratuity tax onto everyone's bill. A
vote would be taken to determine who is
alright with this and who is not. The
outcome of this vote, will determine if we use Artisans.
If outcome is not
Artisans, there is China Buffet in Highland, and we'll have discussion where
else to go that serves food at a reasonable price and has the space.
If vote is for a
non-food place, this opens up more options for us.
Arrie thinks we can
get the Highland Fire House to hold meetings, Jacque can reach out to the Hardy
Fire House, and Civic Center.
Carmen thought
these places would also allow us to bring in food and Highland has the marquee
out front as well that would be good advertisement (if allowed to use it).
2) Financial
Revenues:
We
have around $800.00 in our checking account and at this time nothing in the
future in a way of expenditures. We use funds collected from members' dues,
to purchase Christmas gifts for the members, pay for guest speakers meals, purchase
items for our annual pot luck picnic, business cards and club merchandise
(hats, t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc).
Jacque
is working on getting the club Sales Tax Exempt.
It
was suggested to start holding a 50/50 raffle at each meeting.
It
was suggested to have a raffle for a complete working bee hive. The club would purchase the hive, get it
established. Come up with price to
recoup our costs, sells tickets until we reached our goal (depending on time we
hit our mark) stop and draw or continue for x amount of days. Open to the public. This idea to be brought before the members.
3) Social Engagements:
It was agreed that
everyone last year had a good time at our 1st Annual Pot Luck Picnic. We will again have one in September this
year.
Five Rivers Bee
Club Field Trip Day - Our club will start visiting members hives as a group to
get hands-on experience; to learn
techniques, ask questions and offer guidance.
The field trips will be held the 1st Saturday of every month at various
members locations.
4) Educational Events:
It was proposed to have a bee hive donated to
the school for the students to maintain the hive and to be educated on the
necessity of bees. Carmen offered to
head this up to see if the school would approve this.
If there are enough
youths interested in bees, to form a youth chapter. We need youths to start replacing the older
folks that are presently engaged in beekeeping.
5)
Seminars:
Vernon is working
on guest speakers.
We talked about
joining with another Bee Club in the area to do joint guest speaker event. We cannot afford to bring in guest speakers
from bee venues on our own. More
discussion to follow on this.
6) Promotional:
Ads
in newspaper, radio spot, word of mouth, flyers / pamphlets.
We
talked about ways to increase our cash account and it was proposed to have a
Bee Awareness Chili / Spaghetti Dinner Event.
This will be brought up to the members to see if they wish to do this
and volunteer to help. Date and location
to be discussed.
Carmen
asked if we had a slogan. We do
not. She is going to put her thinking
cap on and offer some slogans for us to choose from. "May the buzz BEE with you"
Carmen
also offered to work up a pamphlet to be placed at various businesses in the
area.
Jacque
is going to get in contact with Peter Martin who wanted to do a local televised
segment on the club.
7) Membership
Growth:
We are growing each
month with new members. Last year at
this time, we had 14 folks at the December meeting, this year we had 32.
It was primarily
word of mouth from our members inviting their friends and neighbors, although
we did get some folks from the County Fairs, Bee Classes, Newspaper, and our Facebook page.
Carmen is going to
reach out to Bob Vandergriff, who initially started
the Facebook page and get Admin rights to change a
few things. She is savvy with this type
of thing.
Meeting adjourned at 2:00 p.m.
Minutes submitted by Jacque English