Bees zooming back to the hive entrance.
Image by Jennifer Lanham
Beekeeping For Beginners - Hands on Training (HOT Bees)
To someone thinking about keeping honeybees, a quick review of the internet can make it seem like a complicated hobby – lots of jargon, lots of equipment, lots of ways to do things – and watching YouTube doesn’t quite prepare you for a hive of 50,000 real bees.
The GBKA’s HOT Bees scheme is an opportunity to handle bees. learn from experienced beekeepers and ask them questions about living working hives.
Covering two years and so two full beekeeping seasons, the scheme gives experience of developing and managing your own hive. With the support of knowledgeable and friendly branch mentors you will learn about:
- Bees and their lifecycle in the colony
- What bees need to grow and develop
- Swarming – why it’s important and how to manage it
- Bee diseases – how to spot them and how to deal with them
- Honey and other hive products
- Hives and equipment
Everyone needs to be suited up and ready with their smoker.
Trainees in small groups getting first hand experience with expert guidance.
Flooded again – Autumn 2024
Fortunately storage is off the gound.
Based at the branch apiary, the sessions run for about two hours every Friday from 6pm during April through to September.
After a couple of introductory sessions where you work as a group to inspect and handle a full-sized hive, you’ll be given a starter hive of your own. Beekeepers call this a nucleus or nuc. This is a smaller hive that is yours to care for over the next two years.
Polystyrene Nucs at the apiary.
Full sized hives in comparison.
During each session, you’ll be assisted by a team of branch mentors and the Apiary Manager.
As the training is hands on, you will also learn important practical skills such as how to light a smoker and how to use a hive tool.
The smoker is an essential tool. So is the hive tool which is best kept handy at all times.
You will see your starter hive grow in size until, probably in the second year, it will be big enough to swarm.
With the knowledge gained on the course, this can be managed and prevented and you may possibly produce some of your own honey.
During this time, you or other members of the group will also have met with difficulties or encountered disease. So, by the end of the second year you will have experienced the full life cycle of a honey bee colony. You’ll also have experienced the kinds of problems any beekeeper and their hives might face – and learnt how to deal with them.
HOT is a great way to get to grips with this very practical hobby.
IMPORTANT: Please check availability with the Membership Secretary before booking. These courses are very popular.
If you would like to know more, check out costs or arrange a free taster session, please contact our membership secretary.
There is always maintenance that needs to be done and that includes the apiary.
Nick, Mike and Brian at work in the apiary.
Roger Patterson visits the apiary.
The chairman assembles frames with the trainees on the HOTBees course.
Oxalic sublimation treatment.
Two good reasons to secure hive components with strapping.
Autumn 2024
Bees don’t like condensation but all hives are raised up sufficiently to prevent that.
- Deer, and also horses, will kick hives over. At least, if it is strapped together, it can be recovered!
- Strong winds and an exposed site can have the same effect and topple even a heavy hive over.
Autumn 2024 – Sunday morning and our latest second year group taking their colonies home.
At the Boddington apiary we are all set for a successful over wintering of 35 hives and look forward to welcoming our 2026/27 first year students.
The new 3rd year has been a success and all the second years are going to sign up 
to learn the dark art of Bailey, Shook, Swarm Control, Nucs and Queen Rearing.