Meet in an informal classroom setting for a combination of discussions and hands-on work with bees, hives and hive products. Working in a living laboratory of a small bee yard, students have extensive opportunities to become comfortable with and knowledgeable about handling bees.
Season-long Weekend Series in Natural Topbar Beekeeping 2008:
This class fills up quickly, so please register in advance.
Dates: Weekend One: May 31st - June 1st; Weekend Two: June 14-15; Weekend Three: June 28-29; Weekend Four: July 12-13; Weekend Five: July 26-27; Weekend Six: August 9-10; Weekend Seven: August 23-24; Weekend Eight: September 6-7.
For One Day-Long 2008 workshops in Penasco NM, click here
Topics Covered:
Introduction
We will look at the biology of the honey bee and its role in our ecosystem. The structure of the hive, the roles of queen, worker and drone, and the honey bee’s complex set of duties in completing pollination, storing nectar and pollen, making wax and expanding the hive with baby bees, are all part of the discussion in this initial class.
Building Hives and Obtaining Bees
Now is a good time to be thinking about getting bees into your hive to start out a season of beekeeping. In this class, students have an opportunity to build a topbar hive, talk about alternative hive designs, and learn how to ‘hive’ bees. The cost of setting up a bee yard in both the conventional Langstroth hives and natural topbar hives is also covered.
Hive Products and Dividing Hives
What are honey, pollen and wax? How are they produced by the bees, and what role can a beekeeper play in managing their production? Learn how to identify ripened honey, how to collect pollen with pollen traps, and how wax is made by the bees. Different types of honey and pollen are discussed as well as the difference in honey and wax yields between conventional Langstroth hives and topbar hives. We also dedicate plenty of time to a discussion of splitting or dividing existing hives as a way of growing and managing a healthy bee yard.
Swarm Collection, Beekeeping as a Community Service
In the spring time, feral hives are growing in population and many begin to throw off swarms. Homeowners often don’t want bees in their roofs, trees or anywhere around their home. Beekeepers can offer a valuable service by learning how to catch swarms, remove hives and educate the public about the importance of preserving the honey bee rather than exterminating it. By offering this service to the public, beekeepers can grow their bee yard, charge a fee for the removal and add genetic diversity to their collection of hives. In this class, students learn how to remove a hive of bees from an unwanted location by either trapping the bees or completely removing the hive.
Queens
For beginning and advanced beekeepers, this class teaches the ins and outs of raising queens. Often it is desirable to create new hives from a particularly successful hive, and raising your own queens is the way to do this. Learn how to remove tiny larvae from worker cells, implant them into queen cells, and to induce the bees into raising multiple queens in one hive. A discussion of what happens to the queens after they have been raised, how to cage a queen and how to maintain nucleus hives are all part of this weekend class.
Hive Health & Maintenance
By the middle of summer, the honey production in the hive is starting to happen. The bees are increasing their population and it is important to check the hives for disease or unwanted cross-combing. This weekend class is spent working the bee hives, making observations and logging them into journals. Students learn how to recognize varroa mites and the techniques to combat them naturally, and become familiar with a variety of other hive illnesses and their conventional as well as organic treatments.
Honey Plants, Harvest and Wax Processing
Now the honey starts to fill the hive and harvest can usually begin. In this class, students learn to harvest honey from topbars, crush the combs over a collander into a honey tank and bottle honey. Wax is put into a solar melter to be separated from hive debris and stored for later use in candles or salves. A lecture on agricultural crops and landscaping plants that are beneficial for honey production is part of this weekend.
Making Salves, Soaps and Candles
In this fun weekend, students make their own beeswax candles, salves and lip balms. Books that present recipes and techniques for making various bee products are on display. A lecture on soap-making and marketing techniques for budding entrepreneurs is also a part of this class.
End of Season Hive Maintenance and Conclusion
At the end of the season, it is important to leave the bees in good standing to make it through the winter with their own resources. Combining weak hives, checking for healthy brood pattern and leaving the bees with the proper number of combs to make it through the cold season is the focus of this class. Students learn to put the bees to bed for the winter, and receive their graduation certificates.
Fee:
Fee for this eight weekend series is $880, paid in two installments. The $100 non-refundable deposit is required to hold your space in this very popular class. The class is limited to 20 attendants. There will be no drop-in registration for this program - if you would like to attend it, you need to contact us, make your deposit and register in advance.
Certification:
This is a certificate-granting program. Students wishing to receive certification must attend seven out of eight offered classes.