Beekeeping Course - Beginners Level

Are you interested in beekeeping, want to learn more or maybe you’ve recently started and want to do a course to gain more confidence. Let us guide you through the essentials with our face to face beginner’s beekeeping course. This is a theory course only.

Easy to reach location in West Sussex, 25 minutes north of Brighton. Close to the M23, A23, A27 and A272.

Roger and Becky Payne have over 40 years beekeeping experience between them and Roger has worked as a commercial bee farmer since leaving school looking after up to 1500 hives across 3 counties. We are now downscaling to around 600 hives in order to concentrate on the aspects of beekeeping that we enjoy most – making up nucs of bees, queen rearing and passing on our experience, knowledge and enthusiasm to those who are just starting out in the fascinating world of bees. We look forward to sharing our knowledge and tips with you.

Our course is a one day classroom based course from 10am to 4pm with a break for lunch (not supplied). 

Course programme

Topics will include:

·         The honeybee – importance of bees, biology, lifecycle of who’s who in the hive and their roles. We will include photographs and videos to help you understand the differences between a worker, a drone and a queen.

·         Equipment - what’s needed to get started; choosing your hive type and material ie poly or wood, frames, beesuit, how to light a smoker, use a hive tool, learn the hive parts etc.

·         Apiary – siting your hive(s), apiary management

·         Sourcing bees for your hive including swarm catching and swarm control

·         The beekeeping year

·         Diseases and treatments – how to keep your bees healthy, when to treat and which treatments.

·         Honey harvest

·         Feeding your bees – when and what to feed ie sugar syrup, fondant. Making up your own syrup.

·         Where to get help if you get stuck.

·         Q & A time

What to bring

·         Notebook and pen

·         Packed lunch