BBKA Forum

British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Compulsory Registration - Can it be far off?

  • General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #9217  by Patrick
 13 Oct 2020, 21:10
Good plan. A well taught course should at least take you through a season so you get a grasp of what you may encounter before at least some of it occurs.

Particularly focus on the bits around swarming. It can be the most challenging, frustrating, baffling and exciting part of the whole business. I spent years fighting it (unsuccessfully for the most part) and then eventually learned to work with it, which made both me and the bees a lot happier.
 #9218  by thewoodgatherer
 13 Oct 2020, 21:24
I believe to be a good beekeeper you need both experience but also understanding, you can only get that experience hands on and it takes time, but the understanding you can get in many ways, from your mentor, online, books or your association. I recently helped out a beekeeper with a very defensive colony that was so defensive that she had requested help through the association, they were so bad that I was attacked and stung on the head upon arriving while standing in her hallway with the front door open (hive was 30m round the back of the house), it took us two days to find the queen having moved the brood box to rid the foragers, she had been beekeeping for 15 years, longer than I have but I noticed some big holes in her understanding particularly when she asked me if the now queenless and broodless supers filled with foragers would be able to raise a queen if left. She was very experienced but her understanding was not complete.
 #9223  by Bobbysbees
 14 Oct 2020, 16:09
Thanks for the links Chrisbarlow.
Iv got a good pile of reading to plough through this winter. (Along with some luthier stuff I need to swat up on.)
Seems like my evenings will hopefully be productive this year.
Mainly cause skulking off down to the pub isnt really the grown up thing to do when studying is it?
:lol:
 #9226  by NigelP
 14 Oct 2020, 18:09
Patrick wrote:
13 Oct 2020, 21:10
A well taught course should at least take you through a season so you get a grasp of what you may encounter before at least some of it occurs.
Agree, but what is the outcome when you are on badly taught course? There don't appear to be any agreed standards within the BBKA as what should or shouldn't be taught on their association courses. It appears to be up to the volunteers who sacrifice their time and energy to determine what is taught. It's good that they volunteer, but this can be bad when opinionated beekeepers are driving the courses rather than presenting an overall picture of the possibilities within beekeeping.
 #9230  by Patrick
 14 Oct 2020, 20:33
Yes, it’s a real enough issue Nigel. Beekeeping is not alone in having a variable standard of training for starters. At least there is some however, so perhaps we should be grateful for that, imperfect though it may sometimes be.

To be fair, many hobbies don’t have any training for beginners whatsoever. Even what was once spoken of being the UKs biggest participative hobby (angling) 99% relied on your dad taking you or finding a mate. Whether sea angling, fly fishing or coarse fishing - they all have virtually no training structure to support beginners. And are now in free fall decline.

Aside from chickens, most livestock is probably kept by people who just learnt from their parents - good or bad, especially since nearly all the agricultural colleges have now shut up shop - mine is now a housing estate :roll:

As I recall BBKA did have a go trying to standardise training with the Course in a Case a few years back, which was provided free of charge to branches as I remember. There was also a Train the Trainers initiative I think - am not sure of the take up of either. One could argue that the standardisation of training is via the modular exam process maybe? Not convinced that helps beginners however.

I suspect some branch tutors would not take kindly to being asked to front a standard curriculum. As Mick has eloquently pointed out, what is true for one area might not be so elsewhere. The problem with a middle of the road national approach is it may satisfy nobody.

As we know, we also need to accomodate a range of views on what good husbandry looks like and how to achieve it, and using a range of means and hives. It’s certainly not straightforward is it?
 #9232  by NigelP
 14 Oct 2020, 21:17
No it's not straightforward. I think my disappointments on seeing course material on several courses is they tend toward dogmatic rather than give access to all the options that are open to beekeeper. And yes I do understand the need to simplify initially, but to mislead!!! Hive sizes, how they impact on the type of bees, what do you want from your beekeeping etc. How many BBKA associations give unbiased advice on the types of bees that are available ?And the various pitfalls/advantages of using them? To say nothing of caveat emptor when purchasing bees. My ex-association still encourage starters to begin with a swarm of bees from unknow origin or temperament.. They seem to think that because you haven't kept bees before you can't think.
I stopped teaching on courses when I was told by my old (now ex) education officer that I couldn't talk about vaporization of Oxalic acid (Apibioxal) as a valid method of varroa control.
Deliberate information suppression by association officials is something I will not stand for. But it goes on. So the disinformation/misinformation at associate level continues.
No, not an easy job to sort out, but (blows own trumpet) most of my tutees have thrived in whatever direction they have chosen to take their beekeeping..../wry grin/
 #9233  by AndrewLD
 14 Oct 2020, 21:55
I have seen so many disparaging remarks on this forum lately about beginners beekeeping courses and the tutors that I wonder why anyone gives up their time to deliver them.
Here in Cambridgeshire our association gets anywhere between 80 to 120 beginners asking for training each year. There's a whole team of beekeepers that give up their time for both the theory and practical apiary sessions and the course closely follows a course textbook (The Haynes Bee Manual). They have to cover the basics and there isn't the time to divert off into the non-mainstream. We offer a follow-up course that goes more off-piste once they have had a complete year. The beginners just cannot handle any more information and what is notable is that many people, especially the young, seem to only listen to sound-bite sized pieces of information. That is one reason why we had to introduce a textbook and base the sessions on its chapters - so at least they had somewhere to refer to when they hadn't remembered what they had just been told.
I can imagine why Nigel was asked not to talk about vaporized OA treatment; there are definite safety issues that need to be dealt with and frankly, by the time we have covered the simpler ones to use and which treatments to use when - then the session time is up! Better to cover less things properly than more things badly. When it comes to which bees to keep, we follow the textbook advice to recommend local bees and as our textbook points out, some strains can be great until they breed out of strain/type and then they can be a nightmare.
 #9234  by NigelP
 14 Oct 2020, 22:23
AndrewLD wrote:
14 Oct 2020, 21:55
When it comes to which bees to keep, we follow the textbook advice to recommend local bees and as our textbook points out, some strains can be great until they breed out of strain/type and then they can be a nightmare.
Andrew I'll take a little issue with this point as one of the many misguided examples. offered by associations....if you don't mind :).
In my local area the the local bees are ferocious, frequent swarmer's , poor honey gatherers and if the queen laid 5 frames of broods she was a keeper. I would not recommend anyone keeping the local bees in my area, textbook advice or not.. Where Mick lives on Teesside (about 30 miles away) the locals are s docile as the Buckfast bees I keep and by all accounts quite fecund and recommended. The differences in bee temperament between small differences in geographic areas is something your textbook doesn't take in to account and will mislead many new beekeeper. No universal textbook advice from me.
A simple understanding of genetics tells you that if you have a pure line and breed them in area with aggressive "locals"; 2 generations later (F2 if you will) then the offspring are at least 75% local ....so where has that aggression come from? Not from the original strain is quite obvious.
I understand this all too well as this is what I have to contend with on a yearly basis...and I don't always get it right as some my previous post will attest to.
 #9235  by huntsman.
 14 Oct 2020, 23:31
Nigel' <are s docile as the Buckfast bees I keep >

No such things these days. All now mongrels since Bro Adam didn't bother to look to Ireland where Amm was still the native honeybee as it was in the U.K.

We only have Apis mellifera mellifera in the RoI but the odd twit will try and import the odd so called 'Buckfast.'

I'll accept that in the U.K. there are now many breeders trying to produce something similar to Adam's Buckfasts but they are not true Buckfasts.

However , Bro. Adam successfully branded 'Buckfast' and while his target was to get back to something akin to Amm, he didn't quite get there. Nice bees by all accounts but with a massive importation of Apis mellifera Lingusta queens U.K. bees were doomed to become mongrels.

But if you think you have Buckfast honeybees and it keeps you happy, work away.
 #9236  by Bobbysbees
 14 Oct 2020, 23:48
I can see the idea behind some sort of standardized beginners course and a general curriculum for them to follow, with allowances made for regional/location based differences. And yes some kind of text based reading material weather from a book or specified online material. But heavens above not a Haynes manual.
There ok as a VERY rough practical guide, but even having used them in regards to cars and motorcycles as well as guitars. I would not for a second call myself a mechanic or luthier just because i had read one a few times to get answers or direction on specific thing i needed to look up now and then.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7