| April |
| 21 and 28 |
|
Use of smoker, opening a colony, basics of what to look for, recognition of nectar/
pollen/brood/eggs. Concept of bee space. Also encourage students to use the library. |
| |
| May |
| 5 |
|
Foraging behaviour, pollen collection and use. Recognition of 3 castes of bee. Discuss
how to site an apiary. |
| 12 |
|
Recognition of Queen cells, swarming behaviour, supersedure. Making frames (probably
half the group, depending on numbers) |
| 19 |
|
Basic swarm control, artificial swarming. The nucleus hive. Making frames (other half
of group) |
| 26 |
|
Different kinds of hives - advantages and disadvantages |
|
| June |
| 2 |
|
Andy Wattam. Coping with varroa. |
| 9 |
|
Uniting colonies, moving colonies, preventing robbing. |
| 16 |
|
Clearing bees from supers. Recognition of queenless colonies and how to re-queen. |
| 23 |
|
Andy Wattam. Foul brood and other diseases |
|
| 30 |
|
Extraction, filtering and bottling of honey.
(I hope members of L&RBKA will volunteer to show a beginner or two how they extract and
bottle their honey) |
| July |
| 7 |
|
Review of course. Visit to Palmers’ Barn |
| 14 |
|
Winter preparations, feeding. Use of honey in cooking, with tasting session.
Encouragement to come to winter meetings! –and Palmers’ Barn 2010! |
There has been unprecedented demand for our 2009 series of courses, so much
so that we have had to close the application list and create a reserve list. In order that
those on the reserve list can get some tuition, a 'taster' session has been organised for
Saturday 30 th May 2009 further details of this will be published here when available. A
second course of theory lectures is being put together with the inteded venue of Walton
village hall, again further details will be published here when available.
We have prepared a document that gives guidelines to help 'would be' beekeepers decide if
beekeeping is suitable for them, it is linked here.
