Improvers Beekeeping Course

Westport Bee keeping Association Improvers Beekeeping Course

Topics

• Beekeeping
• Acquiring Bees
• Local Association
• Understanding Swarming
• Its causes
• Signs of it about to happen
• How to deal with it before a swarm and after
• How to fix it when it’s gone wrong

Disease

• Problematic Ones
• Varroa
• Acarine

Dangerous one

• AFB  American Foul Brood
• EFB  European Foul Brood

Ignorable ones

• Chalk brood
• Ants
• Wasps, etc
• How to recognise
• Disease Inspections
• Treatments both legal and unregistered

Honey Handling

• Clearing your Hive
• Clearing Boards
• Timescale
• Transporting your Supers home
• Extracting
• Filtering
• Bottling
• Labelling
• Selling
• Regulations and Hygiene
• Cleaning extractor and Mead Making

Nuc

•  Preparation and Why
• Understanding the Reasons
• Uses of Nucs throughout the Apiary
• Apiary control
• Swarm control
• Frame drawing
• Making Nucs for Sale
• Buying Nucs
• Travelling with Nucs and transporting same. Moving hives
• Proper strapping/Foaming
• Proper ventilation
• Adequate man power

Apiary Locations

• How to approach site owners
• Rates for rent
• Best Practice
• Amount of hives per location
• Height of hives

Preinspection Checks

• Site walkabout
• Entrance watch
• Ground watch i.e. acarine

Inspection techniques

• Finding the queen, Marking and Clipping
• Reasons for this
• Using the hive tool
• How to handle the frame
• How to handle the queen
• When to smoke/when not to
• Use of water spray
• Bait hives
• Makeup
• Lures

Queen Rearing

• Inducing queen rearing
• Relevant points i.e. food bees per min to cell etc
• Mating
• Nucs
• Apidea
• Hives
• Other
• Types of hives, making frames
• Framed national/ commercial
• Top bar, Kenyan, Rose, Peroni,  etc
• Skep  uses off

The Law   

• Ownership of Bees/Equipment
• Ownership of Swarms
• Crime prevention
• Very public or very hidden
• Polystyrene vs. wood
• Good Practices
• No spilt comb
• No brace comb on ground etc
• Open Floors
• Shelter
• Smoker in car
• Smoker fuel