one-day course beekeeping

venue: Bill Quay Community Farm, Gateshead

This course is run by Mark and Kym of North Pennine Bees.

There is so much to know about bees...
- did you know that the brain of a worker honey bee is less than a cubic millimetre but has the densest neuropile tissue (brain) of any living animal?
- do you wonder what it does with all that brain power?
- and why are the bees dying off?

We won't be able to answer all your questions, but we will do our best to answer all we can. Please come equipped with all the questions you can think of. 

On the course we will: 

• look inside a colony (weather permitting) 
• handle the bees and frames 
• look for a queen
• identify workers, nurse bees and drones
• spot eggs, larvae and other interesting things in the hive
• use smokers and the equipment necessary for day to day beekeeping. 
  

We will go into some of the general principles of beekeeping, including:

• the importance of beekeeping on a national basis and a local basis
• the life cycle of queens, workers, drones, and their division of labour
• the make-up of a modern hive
• pollination, nectar and honey
• wax, propolis and royal jelly
• the life cycle of a hive
• swarming and swarm control
• a brief outline of diseases
• the importance of hive hygiene

more on beekeeping

we will look at the kinds of plants that attract bees; here is a honey bee on a phacelia

inspecting a hive

guarding a polystyrene hive; you can see propolis around the entrance