First Taste

Used under CCA 3.0 – created by Wojsyl

On Saturday the better half and myself went along to our first batch of beekeeping training. While it was interesting I can’t help but feel that the amount of pre-reading and self-study I’ve been doing prevented me from enjoying the course quite as much as I could have done. Without any of the pre-reading it would have seemed packed with information and tidbits – but unfortunately all the theory felt to me like retreading old ground.

There was definitely a highlight to the course though, and that was getting our hands on a hive in order to inspect it. Honestly I was expecting this to be much more intensive and difficult than it was. With a little smoke, and a lot of honey, in them the bees were incredibly placid as we lifted out frames and carefully studied them – checking for well-laid brood, larvae, and searching for the queen. Having been through this I can definitely see the importance of marking the queen, and of having systems to keep track of ages of both queen and frames.

Basically though what the course gave me was worth the money – I’m now confident that we will be absolutely fine once we’re up and running. The one disappointment was that we may not be able to get up and running until next year. We’ll see what we can manage though.