Practical Beekeeping Training

In addition to providing new beekeepers with a mentor, Warwick and Leamington Beekeepers provides "hands on" confidence building practical training at its teaching apiary.  Whilst attendance on the Introduction to Beekeeping course is not a pre-requisite, for the practical training it is much better to attend the Introduction to Beekeeping Course (ITB) first.

We meet from 6.00pm on one evening per week from the end of April until the end of August.  We ask our trainees to help with the seasonal work required by our colonies and we provide specific instruction in the following areas:

• Use of the smoker and other calming methods
• Opening, inspecting and closing hives
• Use of hive tools and the apiary tool-kit in general
• Aspects of hygiene, pests, predators and diseases, including Varroa monitoring and control
• Safety, stings and protective clothing
• All aspects of hive components including maintaining bee space.  Different hive types. Equipment cleaning and storing. Recognizing brood, adult bees and stores.
• All the fundamental manipulations eg uniting hives, swarm control, comb changes, queen marking and clipping, making nucs, queen introduction and hiving swarms.  Loading an observation hive and "bleeding off" bees for shows
• Adding and removing supers and introduction to honey extraction
• Disease inspections and recognition.  Sampling bees.  Other colony problems
• Feeding bees and preparing colonies for the Winter

At an appropriate time, we invite all branch members to register for this practical training and experience.