Beekeepers need training too!
There are many courses about general beekeeping these days from introductory courses for those who are just about to, or have just started out, general courses for those with a little more experience and some very advanced ones for the old hands who need to learn more detail about specialist topics, such as anatomy, diseases and advanced techniques.
open cedar beehive
One of the popular topics on honeybee related forums and blogs is swarm collection or swarm trapping, they are exactly the same thing, but the name seems to vary dependant on which area of the country you live in. This is the practice of setting up bait hives dotted around the countryside (or town if that’s where you live and feel that you have a location where they wouldn’t get stolen or vandalised) during the spring in the hope of attracting a passing swarm of bees, trying to find their way to a new home. Strangely though, there is a lot of talk about it on-line although there doesn’t seem to be any training available. So if you are an expert in the field you may want to consider starting one up!
The basic beginners courses are said to be very good, and I personally know a few people who have attended them, although in a couple of cases this was enough to put them off taking it up in the first place. They cover the theory, which in fairness you could get from any one of the many books available on the subject, but they also provide hands on experience and teach people how to handle a bee hive, they get to remove frames to see the difference between honeycomb, capped brood and the various stages from eggs, larvae and on to bees themselves, I am told this is the major benefit of attending these.
They also prepare you for the potential costs involved in starting up, not only do you need some bees and a hive,
honeybees on comb
which between them will cost you around £400, but also that it’s much easier (for reasons that I will not go into here) to have 2 hives, so that’s doubled, then you will need a spare hive or nuc box as part of your swarm prevention strategy, a smoker, hive tool, various treatments for varroa, nosema or chalk brood. That’s not to mention the frames and foundation, oh yes and extra supers for the honeybees to make and store your honey in.
You also need to consider how you will extract your honey, the equipment for this can be quite expensive, although if you join a local beekeeping club (another cost) they may have equipment you can borrow in the first year, provided it’s not booked out for the time you want to use it, remember, the honey cropping season is very short, so everyone will want it at the same time!
So regardless if you want to start out or are looking for the likes of hive building, skep making, swarm collection or honey processing, it’s a good idea to have a chat to your local beekeeping club.
Then, as the topic of this was supposed to be about, but I digressed again, the courses cost you money too, the introduction ones are generally quite competitive, but the advanced ones can cost a lot more. However, if you want to become a beekeeper and have the money to spend, you could do a lot worse than booking yourself onto some training.