.
We have taken on board all the Government recommendations
with regard to preventing transmission of Covid 19 to make our
training centre
compliant with the latest regulations.
Queen Rearing: A practical day looking at
different ways of raising good quality queens.
Beginners Courses
Beekeeping Taster Days - Not sure if beekeeping is really for you? Then why not come and meet the bees for a day and find out? The apiary has different size and style hives in operation and during the day you will get a chance to ask all the questions you may have while looking at colonies, tasting different honeys, finding out how to start, what you need and where you can get bees to begin. Find out all about the beekeepers year and the time, cost and effort required to keep a hive of healthy bees so that you can make an informed decision as to whether beekeeping is for you. Ploughman’s lunch included, with homemade bread, pickles and cake.
Cost £95.00 including lunch and use of protective clothing for the day.
Saturday 9th April
2022. 10am - 4.pm
Beginners Beekeeeping Theory
Course
All the theory you will need to be able to set up and run a healthy and productive hive of your own.
Understand the colony make up and behaviour so that you can manage effectively the processes of swarming and the prevention and treating of disease.
Both as ten week
via Zoom and as three full day training.
Cost
£195
Practical Beekeeping for
Beginners
For aspiring beekeepers or those who have
limited experience and want a chance to develop their skills, this
ten-week course will provide all the help you need to work
confidently with a full colony and manage them successfully to
produce a honey crop- all being well! We provide protective
clothing for use in the apiary together with the tools needed.
Designed for the beginner it will teach you how to inspect a colony
and identify the different castes and sexes, how to handle bees and
give you an introduction to swarming, honey production and the
problems of pests and diseases. On Thursdays in April for ten
weeks, from 6.30pm at the apiary in Whyteleafe.Course Cost
£125.00
Improvers courses
Extraction Day
Saturday
A practical day exploring
some of the different methods and techniques for taking honey from
the hive, uncapping, extracting and bottling your precious golden
harvest.
Starts 10.00am - 4pm cost
£95.00
Microscopy for Bee Keepers
Date to be confirmed for
2022
Find out how to prepare a sample of bees for identification of Nosema and Acarine, using both compound and disecting microcopes.
Also extracting pollen from honey to identify the flowers visited by the bees.
Starts 10.00am -
4pm Course cost £95.00
Disease
Day
Get to handle the
real thing, we have a license to keep infected combs and we use
these to illustrate what diseased larvae really look like. We also
look at meothds of prevention and control not only of the
foulbrooods but also minor brood disorders.
Starts 10.00am - 4pm Ploughman’s type lunch
provided. Course cost £95.00
Queen Rearing -
A whole day during which we will
look at the various methods that the back garden bee keeper can
raise a small number of good quality queens. We look at using
Apideas and mini mating nucs as well as techniques for grafting
larvae and the ‘cupkit’ systems. We also investigate the use of
swarm control systems such as the Damaree and Pagden methods for
producing replacement queens.
Starts 10.00am - 4pm Ploughman’s type lunch provided. Course cost £95.00
Other Courses
Mead Making Workshop
Saturday Date to be
confirmed
from 10am to
4.30pm
Essentially a practical day we will go through the whole process from the start, going through the equipment and materials required, racking off and bottling techniques, all for the small scale hobbyist.
We have plenty of examples of different types of mead ‘on the go’ to try and some mature and ready to drink that we can try. You will see that mead doesn’t have to be the overly sweet drink often presented by commercial companies, it is a complex drink as diverse as any other type of wine and well worth the little effort required to produce it.
Cost
£95
Candle Making Day
from 10.00 am to
4.30pm
A full day of
practical activities with rolling, moulding and dipping to make
beautiful beeswax candles. We show you how to recover and refine
wax from your hive and we cover topics such as safety
and the equipment that you will need to produce these wonderfully
aromatic candles. This day is an extended version of the candle
making workshop as given at the Harper Adams Spring
Convention.
Cost
£95
